"I'll Be Missing You" is released

Why it matters

The Sting-credit issue on "I'll Be Missing You" is the part that is worth knowing if you are a writer thinking about how sampling clearance works. Bad Boy released the single without clearing the "Every Breath You Take" sample. The Police's publishing was administered by EMI and the songwriting royalties go to Sting personally. EMI sued. Sting won. He has received the songwriting royalties on "I'll Be Missing You" ever since, which by various estimates is somewhere between $400,000 and $2,000 a day depending on the year. That is the kind of post-Grand-Upright environment Bad Boy was operating in by 1997. The label had figured out that the safest way to make a guaranteed hit was to interpolate or sample an existing massive pop song and put a current artist on top. It worked commercially, almost every time. It also funded Sting's solo career for the next two decades. You can debate whether the model is creatively sound. You cannot debate that it printed money. "I'll Be Missing You" was one of the cleanest demonstrations of the model. The publishing math has been working the same way ever since.