Sting Makes $2,000 Every Day From Puff Daddy [VIDEOS]

Being a musician, you make a lot of money from album sales, touring, merchandising and more. But one singer is bringing in $730,000 a year for something that will blow your mind!

We all know "Every Breath You Take" by the Police.  Well, Puff Daddy (or P. Diddy) sampled the music for his 1997 smash hit "I'll Be Missing You."  The song was a tribute to the late Notorious B.I.G.  However, neither Diddy or his record company thought it would be a good idea to get permission to use the classic guitar riff.

Now, had they gotten the okay to sample the song, Sting would have probably gotten around a quarter of the royalties.  However, because they neglected to play nice and do it right, Sting was able to demand and easily receive 100% of the royalties.  The strange thing is that even though he owns the rights to the song, he didn't write the music either.

Sting sang the song, Stewart Copeland played drums, and Andy Summers played the guitar.  It was Andy's original work that was illegally sampled.  But since he didn't push for a co-authoring credit on "Every Breath You Take" when it was released, Andy doesn't get a dime!  With Sting pulling in somewhere between $20 and $40 million dollars since 1997, in an interview Andy Summers has called it "The major rip-off of all time."

Despite the issues surrounding the song, Sting still joined P. Diddy on stage at the 1997 Grammy Awards to perform "I'll Be Missing You" along with Faith Evans.  My question is, with a monster hit like "Every Breath You Take" from The Police, did Puff Daddy really think that no one would notice?