Judge Judy had a long-running show of the same name which ran for 25 years. A few years ago, a legal case against the show brought the revelation that the judge – real name Judith Sheindlin – was paid $47million per year. Not bad for a job which only involves filming for 52 days per year.
The court was also told she could have earned another $20million on top by producing the show herself. When questioned at the time, Sheindlin responded characteristically by saying “How much can you eat?”. In other words, $47million – or $903,846 per day of filming – is deemed to be more than enough for Sheindlin to live on.
But Lucian Grainge appears to be even more greedy. He’ll be getting some £150million this year. Admittedly, this isn’t all in salary, but it promises to be a bumper year for him – he’s earning just over £410,000 per day. According to Payscale, the average Universal Music employee in the UK earns £36,000 per year. If Grainge works ten hours a day, he’ll have made £36k in around 53 minutes.
Oh to be a fly on the wall in Universal’s staff rooms right now. I can’t imagine they’d be exactly pleased knowing they’d take over ten years to earn what their boss got in just one day…
Yet despite having all this money, Grainge still isn’t happy. Something which is currently growing in the music industry is “name and likeness rights”. Acquiring these allow record labels to make use of an artist’s brand and likeness in order to sell merchandise or if their music is licensed on TV or wherever.
Sounds a bit mundane, doesn’t it? But if you combine owning these branding rights along with owning the rights to the music or merchandise you’re trying to sell in the process, that’s two money making opportunities. And in this age of 360 contracts, record labels find anything with multiple revenue streams hard to ignore.
You could already buy this private island three times over and have change to spare, Lucian. And if 2022 is anywhere near as prosperous, you could afford to add more to your prospective fleet of islands…
