Baby, he’s a rich man. Paul McCartney is now a billionaire, a milestone that very few musicians reach, Variety reports. Forbes The 84-year-old Beatle’s fortune is now estimated at around $1.4 billion, making him the third richest musician in the world, behind Taylor Swift, with $2 billion, and Jay-Z, with $2.8 billion.
- McCartney’s fortune is the result of decades of shrewd business moves. His MPL Communications publishing empire, which controls his songs and other people’s catalogs (including Buddy Holly’s), is valued in the hundreds of millions. Forbes notes that McCartney’s company owns the copyrights to dozens of Christmas classics, including “Baby It’s Cold Outside” — and that he gets paid every time a high school theater troupe performs Fat.
McCartney’s quarter stake in the Beatles’ Apple Corps holding company, which still brings in about $50 million a year, plus the songwriting royalties he fought to recoup, adds another significant stake. World tours, prime real estate, a premier art collection and works in progress including a 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lanereleased in May, completes the table of billionaires.
At the height of Beatlemania, music publisher Dick James owned the copyright to their lyrics and melodies, their initial recording contract apparently leaving the group with less than a penny per album sold. Forbes Remarks. “The Beatles were victims of the breakdown of their publications,” George Howard, a professor at Berklee College of Music, tells Inc. “McCartney learned from it and, over time, became vested in both maintaining and exploiting his own and others’ copyrights.”
Gn entert
