In case you went again in time and requested composer and musician Mark Mothersbaugh to foretell what his largest moneymaker could be in his practically 50-year profession, he wouldn’t have stated “Uncontrollable Urge.”
The now 74-year-old musician has composed music for TV exhibits like “The Pretty OddParents” and “Rugrats” and flicks like “Thor: Ragnarok” and “The Lego Film,” however “Uncontrollable Urge,” a tune he wrote in 1978 as a founding member of the band Devo, has changed into his largest supply of earnings over the previous decade.
Mothersbaugh’s spouse and supervisor Anita Greenspan informed Rolling Stone earlier this month that the composer makes $1 million per 12 months in royalties on simply that one tune.
The turning level for “Uncontrollable Urge” was when the MTV comedy clip present Ridiculousness first launched in 2011. The present, which spotlights and reacts to viral Web comedy movies, includes a cowl of “Uncontrollable Urge” as its theme tune.
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After over 12 years working on MTV and over 1,500 episodes, Ridiculousness has catapulted “Uncontrollable Urge” to theme tune fame. At one level in June 2020, Selection seen that “Ridiculousness” aired for 113 hours out of MTV’s 168-hour week of programming.
Nonetheless, the tune’s success got here as a shock to its author.
“I’ve written so many different songs for movies and tv exhibits,” Mothersbaugh informed Rolling Stone. “I’d’ve been shocked [years ago] when you informed me that is the one that will change into this prime supply of earnings.”
Mark Mothersbaugh. Photograph by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Pictures for AFI
Mothersbaugh wrote “Uncontrollable Urge” as the primary monitor to Devo’s debut album, “Q: Are We Not Males? A: We Are Devo!” The tune was by no means launched as a single and has solely earned $150,000 throughout all time from Spotify streaming royalties. It by no means made it to the Billboard Scorching 100, in contrast to the Nineteen Eighties hit “Whip It” from Devo, which peaked at quantity 14 on the Billboard Scorching 100.
“This was the very first tune off our first album,” Mothersbaugh informed Rolling Stone. “But it surely’s a pleasant ironic twist as a result of this was one of many songs we by no means even made a music video for. And now it is perhaps the most-played tune ever on MTV.”
Theme songs are huge earners
Mothersbaugh is not the one musician to money in on a profitable theme tune.
Ed Robertson, who wrote the theme tune for “The Massive Bang Principle,” informed Rolling Stone that he has made between seven to 10 figures thus far in whole royalties for the one tune from the time the present ran from 2007 to 2019 to its syndications on TBS right now.
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Marco Jacobo, who created the theme tune for “Abbott Elementary,” informed the publication that he had made six figures from the tune for the reason that present got here out in 2021.
The late musician Allee Willis had a 15% lower of the “I will Be There for You” Mates theme tune. That lower equals about $700,000 per 12 months for Main Wave Publishing, the corporate that now owns the rights to her work, per Rolling Stone.
One trade govt informed the publication that community TV pays 15 instances extra per minute for music than a streaming service like Spotify.
It isn’t simply exhibits that pay nicely — TV commercial theme songs are profitable too. The New York Instances stories that David Paton, one of many two males who wrote the Billboard Prime 10 hit “Magic” in 1974, earns seven figures from the tune utilized in a TV advert for Ozempic.