Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt died with an estate in the UK worth just a few hundred thousand pounds.
The 68-year-old rocker’s estate is valued at a little over half a million pounds, but after debts and costs amounts to £230,753, according to his will.
Estates of artists (yes, I know, but, he was an artist) are a bit more complicated. His performance royalties (ie, recording) will continue to come in for some time. Songwriting for another 70 years. I don’t think “Whatever You Want” is going to survive quite in the same manner that, say, Nessun Dorma has but I’d still expect it to get another couple of decades play on the radio. And such royalties do add up. One play on a BBC station would gross Parfitt’s estate perhaps £30 (Andy Brown getting another such and that number’s a bit of a guess from memory) before whatever deal there is with the music publisher.
He didn’t write that many songs, true, but just that one alone would, I would think at least, provide a useful income. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if there’s a thousand plays a year on UK radio, all paying needle time to the writers.
We have a number of tax specialists around here. How are such future earnings from an estate valued for probate purposes?
£30 for one play on radio? Bloody hell, didn’t realise it was that much: I was expecting pennies.
…estate “in the UK”…
And the rest?
2016 numbers:
BBC Radio 1: £13.63 per minute
BBC Radio 2: £24.27 per minute
BBC 6 Music: £5.25 per minute
PRS takes some, then song publisher, but yes, substantial amounts. Noddy Holder still gets hundreds of thousands a year (reputedly at least) for Merry Christmas Everyone……this is why everyone, but everyone, tries to do a Christmas song. The not George Michael one in Wham certainly gets hundreds of thousands a year still for Careless Whisper (he was credited as co-author).
My regular cabbie has a wealthy sister. She lives next door to one half of a well-known 80s pop duo – a guy who wrote several songs that are standards on a certain type of radio show and compilation CD.
On the desk in his office sits a fax machine (yes, really) which does nothing but churn out royalty statements. None of the amounts are massive (thirty quid here, a hundred quid there) but when it’s going twenty four hours a day, every day of the year it adds up to a pretty tidy income for him.
Ah, Noddy Holder. What a man.
Mark Radcliffe said that Sir Nodwin is the only person he has met who *everyone* is universally pleased to see. Impossible to hear him speak without being left with a smile on your face. He deserves every penny of those royalties.
@GlenDorran – Caitlin Moran tells the story of her dad, who was a handyman around Brum. One day he was called to the house of Dave Hill, Slade’s guitarist, to do some garden work. He was less than impressed with Mr Hill, and so left a message. On the underside of some paving slabs he used to lay a path, he wrote in cement:
DAVE
HILL
IS
A
CUNT
Not my field but earnings are different from assets liable to inheritance tax. Whoever takes over the rights will pay the taxes as they fall due. If he put the rights into a company, then you would have to estimate the company’s value for iht purposes, probably using discounted cash flows
Flatcap Army
He may well have thought that of Mr Hill, but he certainly sired one and, as we know, the apple never falls far from the tree.
with regards to the size of his estate – he claimed that at his peak he was spending a grand a week on cocaine and £500 a week on vodka. That plus four kids by three wives would probably have consumed a pile of cash, especially is he was sensibly advised and had shoved money in trust
Also: why different rates across the BBC?
Size of audience.
Of course.
So: BBC Radio 3 = £0.01 per minute?
Radio 3 doesn’t pay out much in royalties to composers or lyricists, the majority of their output being written by people more than 70 years dead.
Performance royalities are a different matter of course – few classical music recordings are out of copyright and most of those are not of the highest (audio) quality.
90 years, surely, since the boppies mugged a previous govt?
My bad. They took it from London fe+50 to life+70.
“Mark Radcliffe said that Sir Nodwin is the only person he has met who *everyone* is universally pleased to see. Impossible to hear him speak without being left with a smile on your face. He deserves every penny of those royalties.”
I’ve never been that keen on Holder, and I can’t stand it when his song comes on radio 1000 times every Xmas, so in my view the Brummie twat should have every pence taken away from him.
Mark Radcliffe is well-known knob so I wouldn’t take anything he said seriously anyway.
Didn’t realise the Beeb paid that much in royalties. Now I know why the airwaves are filled with mindless prattle from people who are famous for being famous.
Pedantic I know, however Noddy Holder is from Walsall in the Black Country rather than Brummagem. The narcissism of small differences.
“Ah, Noddy Holder. What a man.” – and a great rock singer. Its said that he turned down the job or rock singer for AC/DC after Bonn Scott died, out of loyalty to his mates in Slade. I wonder how he feels about that now?
( This link suggests that AC/DC are the 11th biggest selling act of all time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists )
ps @Tel like Bernie G says, – Noddy is a Black Country man, not a brummie – not to be confused.