Wizzard’s Roy Wood: I thought Christmas royalties would be my pension
For many, they are the tunes that herald the festive season, but it appears that the era of the Christmas single may be over.
The popularity of downloads, and the tendency for bands to get a Christmas number one with non-festive songs, has led to the demise of the one-hit wonder played every year, according to Roy Wood.
Wood, who penned Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, said he had initially expected the royalties for the song to be his “pension”, after creating it in the heyday of festive-themed records.
But, he said, the advent of the internet meant Christmas hits were no longer the cash cow of yesteryear.
Modern boybands, he said, were now getting number one singles on the week of December 25 without needing to make an explicit link to Christmas, meaning their songs had greater longevity.
Speaking on the Today programme, Wood expressed doubts about claims composers still earned tens of thousands of pounds each year in festive royalties, saying he does not believe it.
His comments follow a report about the little-known songwriters who still receive money each year for decades-old hits.
When asked whether his famous song still earned an annual fortune, he said: “Not as much as it used to, with the invention of downloads.
“I mean, with a record such as mine it’s just too easy to find a way of getting it for nothing and we don’t get paid for it then.”
When asked by BBC Radio 4 whether there had been a “drop off” in sales, he added: “Oh big time, yeah. I thought originally that was going to be my pension but now it’s not.
“I was speaking to my daughter about it, because she’s more of an age group that knows about this kind of thing, and she said with a song as prominent as that there are too many ways to get it free.
“There aren’t many Christmas songs around now [because] when it gets to Christmas day, you stop selling records. People have born that in mind and over the years, recently, boybands have been getting number ones at Christmas and it’s not actually a Christmas song.
“They have that Christmas kind of feel but don’t actually have Christmas in it, which means they can carry on selling the record in the new year.”
Source: The Telegraph
