Earning passive royalty income from song writing

I went to Kuala Lumpur to attend the 2007 MACP Awards ceremony. MACP stands for Music Author’s Copyright Protection. I am one of their members. I registered the membership with my DIY album published in year 2003. Even though I am a member, I had never collected any royalty income. They just do not recognize my song as “publicly” performed music. However, I still attended their annual award ceremony consecutively for the pass 4 years.

This time, I felt honored to be seated besides some great name in the song writing business. Sitting on my left was the great lyricist, Chong Keat Siong who had written lyrics for Harlem Yu, Zhang Dong Liang （张栋梁） and many others. On my right is the youngest song writer who was awarded the best young song writer award, Wu Jia Hui （伍家辉）. Although we are sitting in the same row, but our royalty income is what differentiate between us.

Chong Keat Siong was awarded the most royalty collected from oversea with the song “Qing Fei De Yi” 《情非得已》. For your information, this song is published in the year 2001 and it was recorded and compiled in many albums. This song has earned thousands and thousands ringgits of royalty income every year since then. After 5 years, it is still the song with the most royalty income collected from oversea. I can foresee that as long as F4 is still famous, this song will continue to earn royalty for Chong Keat Siong and Tang Xiao Kang for many years to come.

By writing this song in just a few hours (or probably only in a few minutes), they were paid long term passive income for many years. I really have no idea when this income stream will end.

Song writer: Tang Xiao Kang汤小康, Chong Keat Siong张国祥, Wu Jia Hui伍家辉