Recommendations of the Editorial team
Sting has paid his former bandmates in The Police, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, more than $800,000 (around £595,000) in back payments since autumn 2025. This is reported by the British media, citing court documents. The payment came as part of an ongoing lawsuit in which Copeland and Summers are demanding significantly higher outstanding royalties.
The drummer and guitarist’s lawyers speak of “historic underpayment”. According to their account, Sting owes his former colleagues between two and almost eleven million dollars in unpaid income from the policy catalogue.
The sum already paid represents only a fraction of what the plaintiffs believe they are actually entitled to.
Dispute over streaming and downloads
At a hearing at the High Court in London, Copeland and Summers’ legal team argued that previous contracts from 1997 and 2016 needed to be reinterpreted. In particular, it is a question of whether revenue from downloads and streaming services should be viewed as income subject to remuneration. According to the plaintiffs, the digital use of the policy repertoire was not sufficiently taken into account when the contract was concluded.
The lawyers also emphasized that the previous additional payment did not contain any interest and that the total amount of the claims could even increase as the proceedings progressed. None of the band members were personally present at the hearing.
Sting’s rebuttals in court
Sting’s legal representatives strongly disagreed with this representation. Streaming revenue should not be equated with a sale, but rather falls under the term public communication. For this reason, there is no entitlement to additional royalties. In addition, the 2016 contract expressly only refers to remuneration from the production of sound recordings, not from digital downloads.
From the perspective of Sting’s lawyers, the lawsuit is an inadmissible attempt to retrospectively reinterpret existing agreements. According to their reading, Sting even overpaid his former bandmates over the years, provided the original contract terms were applied correctly.
A conflict with a long history
The current legal dispute dates back to the founding of The Police in 1977. At that time, Sting had agreed to share certain royalties from his songs with Copeland and Summers. This regulation was formalized in 1981 and adjusted again in 1997 after the two musicians claimed that they had not received enough money over a long period of time.
Although Copeland and Summers did not receive any official writing credits for the biggest Police hits, they do claim so-called arranger fees. These are owed to them in particular from the digital exploitation of the band’s extensive back catalogue.
Large sums of money are at stake
A single example shows how lucrative the Police catalog is to this day: The song “Every Breath You Take” reportedly brings Sting around 550,000 pounds in income annually, the equivalent of around 740,000 US dollars. Against this background, it becomes clear why the dispute over streaming and download revenues is so financially explosive.
The hearing is scheduled to conclude in mid-January and a comprehensive process has already been announced. The process could set the tone for how older band contracts are interpreted in the digital age.