I hope you're right re: the royalties.

I have no idea where the Cowell profiting from RATM rumour comes from. If I was a cynical person I would say it was started by Cowell's people to discourage the xfactor haters from buying it.

Actually, the only truth in it is that both Rage's Label and Simon Cowell's 'Syco' (To which all the xfactor winners are signed) operate under the Sony BMG umbrella. But they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

As I understand it, Syco has a 5 year deal to be part of the Sony group. This way it benefits from Sony's distribution power, and Sony are guaranteed a large income from distributing the xfactor shit every year. It's a really quick turnover of cash and a rinse and repeat process. Plenty of suckers for the Cowell money machine to chew up and spit back out every year.

Aside from that Cowell might get some kind of A&R Consultancy fee from Sony BMG, but definitely not royalties from artists on other labels that he has nothing to do with.

That is my understanding anyway. If anyone knows any better I'll be interested to hear…

Thanks for the comment, do come back and feel free to pitch in anytime

Unfortunately Simon Cowell gets royalties from Killing In The Name Of as well (don't ask me how, but it's been widely reported), so he'll still be doing nicely out of it. Nonetheless, it will feel nice to be able to possibly affect some change from the status quo.