ENTERTAINMENT
Paul McCartney has written some of the most valuable songs in history. But according to Forbes, the reason he is now a billionaire has as much to do with what he bought as with what he wrote.
On Monday, in the first edition of its new newsletter, "The Billie," Forbes estimated McCartney's net worth at no less than $1.4 billion. That makes the 84-year-old former Beatle officially a billionaire by the magazine's count, and the third-richest musician in the world. The only artists ahead of him are Jay-Z, at about $2.8 billion, and Taylor Swift, at about $2 billion. The news spread quickly through Variety, Newser and the Daily Beast. McCartney declined to comment on the estimates, according to Forbes.
The Business Behind the Ballads
The largest piece of the fortune isn't the Beatles' records. It's MPL Communications, the publishing company McCartney founded in 1969. Forbes values MPL at no less than $250 million. The company owns thousands of songs and probably brings in tens of millions of dollars a year.
Its catalog runs well beyond McCartney's own songs. Over the decades he has bought Buddy Holly's catalog, Broadway musical scores and a shelf of Christmas standards. Forbes cites holiday staples such as "Blue Christmas." Newser, summarizing the reporting, noted that he even earns royalties when school theater groups stage Grease. Each December, then, a good share of the seasonal music in shopping malls makes money for a man from Liverpool.
The second pillar is Apple Corps, the Beatles' holding company. Forbes says Apple brings in upward of $50 million a year from streaming, vinyl and merchandise. McCartney, Ringo Starr and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison each own a quarter, and Forbes values each stake at more than $150 million.
The third pillar is the songwriting rights to the Beatles' catalog, which McCartney spent years reclaiming. Control of the Lennon-McCartney songs famously slipped away from him in the band's early days. Michael Jackson held the catalog in the 1980s, and Sony bought in during the 1990s. Today, Forbes reports, McCartney controls all of his U.S. publishing. His share of those copyrights brings in at least $10 million a year and is worth at least $200 million.
The rest is the fortune of a working superstar. Forbes points to hundreds of millions of dollars from world tours, including the Got Back tour, which Variety notes ran 79 shows from 2022 through 2025. It also cites property in the U.K. and the Hamptons and an art collection that includes works by Picasso and Magritte.
A Lesson Learned the Hard Way
The fortune rests on a lesson McCartney learned the hard way. At the height of Beatlemania, the copyrights to the band's songs belonged to music publisher Dick James, and the group's first record deal reportedly paid them less than a penny per album sold.
George Howard, a professor at Berklee College of Music, put it bluntly in comments cited by Newser: "The Beatles fell victim to having their publishing sold out from under them." McCartney, Howard said, "learned from this and, over time, became acquisitive," both with his own copyrights and with other people's.
His former bandmate offered a more personal explanation. Forbes recalls Ringo Starr describing Paul as "the workaholic of our band." Six decades later, the description still fits. McCartney released his 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, in May. His life after the Beatles and the founding of Wings is the subject of Morgan Neville's documentary Man on the Run.
Forbes also included a bit of history from its own archive. In 1965, when Northern Songs, the company that held the Lennon-McCartney songbook, began trading on the London Stock Exchange, Forbes and much of the financial press treated it as a speculative stock.
Not the First Billion-Dollar Headline
Some readers may remember a similar headline before. In 2024, Britain's Sunday Times Rich List called McCartney the U.K.'s first billionaire musician, measured in pounds. The Forbes figure is a separate, dollar-based estimate from a publication known for strict billionaire calculations. With it, the magazine formally puts him alongside Jay-Z and Swift in its count of musician billionaires.
The company he keeps is telling. Jay-Z built his fortune through liquor, art and business stakes. Swift built hers in large part by reclaiming her master recordings and breaking touring records. McCartney's route is the oldest of the three: he owned the songs. Swift's well-publicized fight to control her catalog and McCartney's decades-long effort to recover his tell versions of the same story.
What This Means for You
For fans, McCartney's billion is more than a trivia answer. It explains why the business side of music matters. Every stream of "Hey Jude," every vinyl reissue and every school production of Grease sends money to whoever owns the rights. In his case, that's increasingly the man himself.
For aspiring artists, the lesson is hard to miss. Two of the three richest musicians alive built their fortunes on ownership, not just hits. Publishing, masters and catalog rights may sound like dull contract language, but over a career they can be worth far more than a sold-out stadium. If you write songs, learn what you're signing and hold on to what you can.
And for anyone shopping this holiday season, it's worth knowing that when "Wonderful Christmastime" plays over a store's speakers, as it almost certainly will, the man who wrote it benefits as both the songwriter and, through MPL, the publisher.
The Long Game
There's something fitting about the timing. At 84, McCartney is still recording, still the subject of new films and still among the most popular live acts in the world. The billion-dollar figure isn't really a reward for one hit or one tour. It's the result of a long game that began when a young songwriter discovered he didn't own his own songs.
He spent the following decades fixing that, and he did more than fix it. Sixty years after the financial press dismissed the Beatles' songbook as a speculative bet, the man behind it has become one of the richest musicians in the world.
