Paul McCartney becomes a billionaire and world’s third richest musician
The former Beatle’s net worth is now $1.4bn, according to a new analysis by Forbes, which puts him behind other musicians Jay-Z and Taylor Swift.
Sir Paul McCartney has become part of the billionaires club. The former Beatle now has a net worth of $1.4bn (£1.04bn), according to Forbes, making him the third wealthiest musician in the world, behind Jay-Z valued at $2.8bn (£2.01bn) and Taylor Swift at $2bn (£1.49bn).
McCartney has been claimed to have made his fortune from his music catalog, legal wranglings, tours, and art collection, by the magazine. MPL Communications, the publishing company he founded in 1969 which makes his own catalogue and those of other artists, is a major source of his wealth, accounting for the vast majority of his fortune.
Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars is the revenue generated from a company’s purchases of the copyrights of artists like Buddy Holly, Broadway musical scores, and Christmas standards like It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire). According to Forbes, every time a high school does a show of Grease or plays a version of the song Blue Suede Shoes, McCartney gets some money.
In addition, McCartney’s 25 per cent of Apple Corps’ earnings from streaming royalties and the sale of vinyl and merchandising, amounting to around $50m (£37.2m) per annum, is also due to him because he is a former member of The Beatles. Then, he earns approximately $10m (£7.4m) annually from the copyright of the band’s songs, a windfall accrued through a series of court battles in the United States and the UK over the last 20 years. And the music publishing, they estimate, has been worth $200m (£148.8m).
The magazine’s valuation of McCartney’s wealth also takes into account his income from touring, including 79 shows on his Got Back tour in the years from 2022 to 2025, real estate worldwide and the value of paintings from high dollar luminaries like Magritte and Picasso.
McCartney is still an active musician into his 80s, with the release of his most recent album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, this past May. He was the musical guest on that month’s season finale of Saturday Night Live and performed the Beatles song I Want to Hold Your Hand for the first time in 60 years in July as a part of another billionaire, Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden.
This year McCartney also got to see Man on the Run, a documentary about his life after The Beatles, directed by Morgan Neville.