If you were to go back in time and ask the composer and musician Mark Motersbaugh to predict who would be his greatest creator of money in his nearly 50-year career, he would not say “incentive uncontrollable. “
The 74-year-old musician has composition Music for television shows like “The Fairly Oddparents” and “Rugrats” and films like “Thor: Ragnarok” and “The Lego Movie” but “Uncontrolble URGE”, a song he wrote in 1978 as a founding member of the group Devo, It has returned to its largest source of income over the last decade.
Motersbough's wife and manager, Anita Greenspan rolling stone said At the beginning of this month, the composer makes $ 1 million a year of royalties for that song only.
The turning point for “uncontrollable stirring” was when the mtv humorous clip appearance Funny First launched in 2011. The show, which puts the spotlight and responds to videos of viral comedy online, features a cover of “Unconrollable URGE” as its main song.
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After over 12 years in MTV and over 1500 episodes, Funny has catapulted the song “Uncontrolble Urge” in the fame of the song. At one point in June 2020, The variety was noticed that “Ridiculousness” was broadcast for 113 hours by the 168-hour MTV week program.
However, the success of the song was a surprise for its author.
“I have written many other songs about movies and television shows,” Motersbaugh told Rolling Stone. “I would be shocked (years ago) if you told me that this is what would become the main source of income.”
Mark Motersbaugh. Photo from Rodin Ecenroth/Getty Images for AFI
Motersbaugh wrote “Uncontrolble Urge” as the first song on the Devo debut album, “P: Aren't we men? A: We are Devo!” The song was never released as single and has earned only $ 150,000 all the time from Spotify broadcast honorates. Never reached the hot 100 Billboard, unlike the 1980s “Whip It” by Devo, who arrived at number 14 to the hot 100 billboard.
“This was the first song from our first album,” Motersbaugh told Rolling Stone. “But it's a pleasant ironic turn, because that was one of the songs we didn't even make a video clip for. And now it's probably the most ever played song on MTV.”
Thematic songs are great victorious
Motersbaugh is not the only musician earning money in a lucrative song.
Ed Robertson, who wrote the thematic song for “The Big Bang Theory”, told Rolling Stone that he has done from seven to ten digits so far in the total royalties for a song from the time the show took place from 2007 to 2019 And so far. Trade Unions in TBS today.
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Marco Jacobo, who created the thematic song for “Abbott Elementary”, told the publication that he had made six figures from the song since the show came out in 2021.
The late musician Allee Willis had a 15% reduction in the song “Ill be there for you” Friends. This landing is equal to about $ 700,000 a year for Primary Wave Publishing, the company that now owns the rights to its work, according to Rolling Stone.
An industry executive told the publication that TV on the network pays 15 times more per minute for music than a transmission service as Spotify.
It's not just the performances that pay well – the songs on television advertising themes are also lucrative. New York Times It reports that David Paton, one of the two men who wrote the Billboard Top 10 “Magic” in 1974, earns seven figures from the song used in an Ozepic TV ad.