Calculating how much I owe Laurie Berkner

Sometime around eight years ago I started singing Laurie Berkner’s Moon, Moon, Moon to my firstborn as part of her nighttime routine. I sing a slightly faster and half as a long version which included such lines as “you’re taking care of Maggie,” and usually instead of “pizza pie,” it was something like “sleepy pie,” “Maggie pie,” “stinky pie,” whatever works for the night.

TL;DR – just fun with math, licensing, with kids at 7 & 9 years old.

About two years later Aerin came along and I started singing this to her as well. Each kid had to have a personalized version, and for reasons unknown if I was not the one to sing it it was the worst song ever. Like seriously kiddos, I’m a tone deaf cover band with an audience of one here.

Each performance has been approximately one minute, and the number of times that it has not been sung is about 35 nights total (70 missed) – this being some nights a kid conked out, or decided they were too big for the song (this lasts about two days before I’m asked to sing it again,) or other reasons. Each time I’ve noted and wondered if that was the last time I was singing that bedtime song to that kid.

Additionally there have been a couple of encore performances… plenty of them for when a kid insists I did not sing, but I did…

So, 8 out of 9 years nightly singing for one, and probably 7 years at this point for the other as she got started fairly early. 5,110 performances give or take of Paul’s one minute rendition of Moon Moon Moon. About 85 hours of singing 5,110 performances of half of the song.

According to streaming calculators I can find that’s between $25.55 and $81.74 had I played the song 5,110 times. $465.01 licensing fees had I recorded it (9.1 cents per copy of the song distributed. via mechanical license.)

There a point here? Not really. Just something I was thinking about this morning as last night the oldest went to bed without getting a song because she was too tired after a couple of birthday parties.

This also subconsciously probably goes with my attempts lately to ensure every piece of software I’ve used for the past few years is licensed and otherwise not sitting in the default state of “you’ve been using WinRAR for 18 years, it’s time to register!”

Anyhow, random thoughts are random.