7 ms·

How McCartney and Lennon Lost Ownership of the Beatles Catalogue

97 points by JacobAldridge 11y ago

revelation 11y ago
Who are the Dick James and Charles Silver of the tech world?
- chrischen 11y ago
  I think in the tech world if the founders feel screwed they'd just bail and start a new company. The Beatles not only got screwed but essentially had to continue running their company under the agreement for 10 years.
  - frik 11y ago
    > if the founders feel screwed they'd just bail and start a new company. like this Harvard Business School case: https://youtu.be/dz72uaZDWQI?t=5m22s https://youtu.be/dz72uaZDWQI?t=5m22s (Stanford seminar video) the interesting case starts at 6:00
joshstrange 11y ago
> Paul also clarified that none of those earnings came from Beatles songs because amazingly, he did not own them. Ironically, this free advice would come back to bite Paul in the butt two years later when Michael purchased the entire Beatles catalogue for $47.5 million. Paul felt appropriately back stabbed and his relationship with Michael was damaged forever. Not sure I understand this... He felt backstabbed? He had MULTIPLE opportunities to buy back the rights and consistently turned down the offers. Michael came in and offered over 7 Million over what it was offered to Paul for after he turned it down.
- gwern 11y ago
  > Ownership of The Beatles catalogue would remain unchanged from 1969 to 1981 when ATV was sold to an Australian business tycoon named Robert Holmes à Court. Prior to the sale, McCartney had the opportunity to purchase the catalogue from ATV for $40 million. He approached Yoko Ono to see if she wanted to split the cost, but she insisted the catalogue wasn't worth more than $20 million so they eventually declined. To his credit, at the time McCartney was personally worth hundreds of millions of dollars and could have bought the catalgue outright himself, but he feared that buying the songs on his own would make him look greedy and disrespectful of John Lennon's legacy.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    "wasn't worth more than $20 million", who did she hear that from Pete Best?
    - cfcef 11y ago
      What I'm wondering reading this is why song rights were so profitable in this time period. Why were McCartney and Jackson making so much money and why didn't the record labels keep the rights locked up tight if the rights were so lucrative long-term?
      - mgkimsal 11y ago
        > record labels keep the rights locked up They don't own them up front in the first place. No doubt some labels negotiate that as part of a deal, but they're separate domains to start with.
        cfcef 11y ago
        I don't think that's an answer but passing the buck. Why are they separate in the first place? Why aren't record labels, as part of standard modus operandi, been buying copyrights from bands? They are best placed to do this sort of thing, much better placed than random musicians who happen to get rich and then dabble in investing - record labels have (or had) the contacts up front, they had the money, the diverse portfolios to spread risk...
- wmeredith 11y ago
  This also struck me as very odd. Additionally, considering that McCartny's estate was allegedly worth over $300 million at the time I wonder, as an artist, how he thought his money would be better spent?
- Zikes 11y ago
  Not to mention his "advice" was basically his bragging about earning money on the backs of other artists whose song rights he purchased in the same manner.
brandonmenc 11y ago
Michael purchasing the entire Beatles' catalog after McCartney bragged about making money from music he didn't write is one of the greatest ironic tales ever. I can just imagine Michael Jackson telling Paul, in that innocent childlike voice, "I took your advice and it's really working great for me!" and Paul just fuming mad. People will still be talking about this hundreds of years from now.
- myth_buster 11y ago
  There is an interview where Paul mimics Michael saying "I'm going to buy The Beatles catalog". Paul at that time thought Michael was joking.
  - rudedogg 11y ago
    I found this one where talks about it on Letterman https://youtu.be/f4cVsqUF7GQ?t=181 https://youtu.be/f4cVsqUF7GQ?t=181
    - kyberias 11y ago
      And obviously Paul knows it to be true at the time of this interview.
giarc 11y ago
Stories of up and coming bands signing stupid deals are far to common. Too many greedy managers, record companies and representatives with their hands out when someone gets a bit of fame.
- CPLX 11y ago
  That may be true, but in this context not totally informative, as the Beatles basically invented the modern concept of hugely successful pop stars who wrote their own songs. There was a lot more for publishers to do to earn their money -- namely find people to record the songs in their catalog -- in the prior model. There wasn't really much of a precedent at the time for what would come to be accepted as a fair deal.
- jaredandrews 11y ago
  This brings to mind an old, interesting essay written by legendary sound engineer Steve Albini: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 This appears to have been written for the "indie rock" bands that got picked up by major labels after the success of Nirvana. Steve watched a lot of his friends get burned and he breaks down exactly why in this essay.
  - threeio 11y ago
    You get upvoted for the negativland reference :)
  - mazelife 11y ago
    The most detailed accounting I've come across of the economic realities of the record biz (including the myriad ways an artist can be screwed by his or her label) is the book "So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star" by Jacob Slichter (drummer for Semisonic). It's a really fantastic read I recommend to anyone who wants to be a professional musician or just wants to understand the industry. If you want wild antics and groupies and what not, skip it. But man does it ever go into a lot of technical detail of how the recording industry sausage gets made.
    - 11y ago
bloomingfractal 11y ago
For me that kind of story gives extra justification to abolish copyrights in the way they currently are. Our culture is being held hostage by all these games and the real artists get paid very little. Meanwhile, we technologists should just torrent stuff to make a point and continue to innovate with systems that make copyright obsolete.
- realityking 11y ago
  Assuming you're a developer or designer, why don't you start by telling your employer you're morally opposed to copyright and would like to see all fruits of your labor to be in the public domain. Please report back how it went.
  - Consultant32452 11y ago
    That's an interesting one. Let's say copyright was cut down to maybe 10 years. How much software that's running the world right now would be out of copyright protection? I suspect a significant percentage of the fundamentally important code for our economy is at least 10 years old.
crabasa 11y ago
I find it fascinating that content creators consistently underestimate the durability of their work while technologists overestimate the durability of theirs.
Tloewald 11y ago
I'm confused. I thought that the Beatles' story is ultimately about how clever their rights management was in the end -- supposedly they only sold the rights for records and tapes, and then when CDs became a thing they got to sell them again. Most recently and publicly they reached a deal with Apple for distribution via iTunes. Exactly what was Apple negotiating for if they had lost ownership of their catalog? According to Snopes, they sold the publishing rights to Northern Records. "Paul McCartney and John Lennon (and Lennon's estate, now that he's dead) have always received their 50% songwriter's share of the royalties for all Lennon-McCartney songs." http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp Basically, the Beatles tried to be both the artist and the publisher (Northern Records) and after signing over their publishing rights to Northern Records, lost control of Northern Records. So they're reduced to the position of a merely very successful artist who doesn't own his/her own record company. I also see here that rights revert to the artist after 56 years: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2394325/Sir-Paul-McCartney-set-win-rights-Beatles-catalogue.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2394325/Sir-Pau...
- acqq 11y ago
  > Exactly what was Apple negotiating for if they had lost ownership of their catalog? There was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Songs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Songs and then there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Records The former company "owns" the older songs and the later the later songs (that is, the "publishing rights"). As far as I understand only the former company and songs (but that was a significant part of all Beatles songs) ended up by Jackson. The article from the Daily Mail you link to is wrong (now who would expect that) saying "Payday: Sir Paul will be able to receive royalties from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road albums" because as far as I understand Abbey Road is an Apple Records album, never owned either by Northern Songs or later Jackson. Now how I know that, which were the Apple Records records? I'm just old enough to have had the vinyl records, and holding them it was immediately obvious which is which: http://thebeatles-collection.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/111.jpg http://thebeatles-collection.com/wordpress/wp-content/upload... vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude#/media/File:Hey_Jude_Beatles.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude#/media/File:Hey_Jude_... Paul apparently has to pay to Northern Songs when he plays his older songs, according to his own words, but is it true? I guess the "LP vs CD rights" story you mention comes from the fact that the newer remixes were made specially for the CD's. But who owns what when remixing the song "owned" by Northern Songs, I don't know. Anybody knows?
frik 11y ago
Michael Jackson also owned Elvis Presley's Catalogue! http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvisnews_lisanothappywithmichael.shtml http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvisnews_lisanothappywithmi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U7SsGjSgR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U7SsGjSgR0
_lce0 11y ago
I like how part-2 closes So what's the lesson here? If you find a way to make a ton of money investing in X, don't tell your friends about it! redacted _X_ was mine
- empath75 11y ago
  And the corollary: if one of your friends tells you how you can make a ton of money investing in X, he probably has an ulterior motive.
WalterBright 11y ago
No mention of Ringo & George? Looks like they got cut out entirely?
- jccc 11y ago
  This is about Lennon/McCartney-written songs, which is just about all of them.
akozak 11y ago
I'm very curious how good of an investment it was for MJ, or how Paul and Yoko decided it was a bad investment at the time.
- Terretta 11y ago
  The article answers this: Sold his $47M stake in ATV to Sony for $90M + half of Sony+ATV. His part soon grew to be worth $1B.
olivermarks 11y ago
http://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/01/13/television-thank-your-lucky-stars/ http://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/01/13/television-thank-your... Dick James was instrumental in the creation of the Beatles showbiz phenomenon, getting them on UK TV talent shows. Easy to forget this seminal effort and stake once the fab 4 became famous. Separately, Michael Jackson also owned the Elvis Presley catalog. He shared ownership of the Beatles catalog with Sony in later years, and there was a lot of bad blood between them. If you are into intrigue it is very hard to find out Jackson's true worth at his death but easy to follow the money afterwards...

97 points by JacobAldridge 11y ago

revelation 11y ago

Who are the Dick James and Charles Silver of the tech world?

chrischen 11y ago
I think in the tech world if the founders feel screwed they'd just bail and start a new company. The Beatles not only got screwed but essentially had to continue running their company under the agreement for 10 years.
- frik 11y ago
  > if the founders feel screwed they'd just bail and start a new company. like this Harvard Business School case: https://youtu.be/dz72uaZDWQI?t=5m22s https://youtu.be/dz72uaZDWQI?t=5m22s (Stanford seminar video) the interesting case starts at 6:00

joshstrange 11y ago

> Paul also clarified that none of those earnings came from Beatles songs because amazingly, he did not own them. Ironically, this free advice would come back to bite Paul in the butt two years later when Michael purchased the entire Beatles catalogue for $47.5 million. Paul felt appropriately back stabbed and his relationship with Michael was damaged forever. Not sure I understand this... He felt backstabbed? He had MULTIPLE opportunities to buy back the rights and consistently turned down the offers. Michael came in and offered over 7 Million over what it was offered to Paul for after he turned it down.

gwern 11y ago
> Ownership of The Beatles catalogue would remain unchanged from 1969 to 1981 when ATV was sold to an Australian business tycoon named Robert Holmes à Court. Prior to the sale, McCartney had the opportunity to purchase the catalogue from ATV for $40 million. He approached Yoko Ono to see if she wanted to split the cost, but she insisted the catalogue wasn't worth more than $20 million so they eventually declined. To his credit, at the time McCartney was personally worth hundreds of millions of dollars and could have bought the catalgue outright himself, but he feared that buying the songs on his own would make him look greedy and disrespectful of John Lennon's legacy.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  "wasn't worth more than $20 million", who did she hear that from Pete Best?
  - cfcef 11y ago
    What I'm wondering reading this is why song rights were so profitable in this time period. Why were McCartney and Jackson making so much money and why didn't the record labels keep the rights locked up tight if the rights were so lucrative long-term?
    - mgkimsal 11y ago
      > record labels keep the rights locked up They don't own them up front in the first place. No doubt some labels negotiate that as part of a deal, but they're separate domains to start with.
      - cfcef 11y ago
        I don't think that's an answer but passing the buck. Why are they separate in the first place? Why aren't record labels, as part of standard modus operandi, been buying copyrights from bands? They are best placed to do this sort of thing, much better placed than random musicians who happen to get rich and then dabble in investing - record labels have (or had) the contacts up front, they had the money, the diverse portfolios to spread risk...
wmeredith 11y ago
This also struck me as very odd. Additionally, considering that McCartny's estate was allegedly worth over $300 million at the time I wonder, as an artist, how he thought his money would be better spent?
Zikes 11y ago
Not to mention his "advice" was basically his bragging about earning money on the backs of other artists whose song rights he purchased in the same manner.

brandonmenc 11y ago

Michael purchasing the entire Beatles' catalog after McCartney bragged about making money from music he didn't write is one of the greatest ironic tales ever. I can just imagine Michael Jackson telling Paul, in that innocent childlike voice, "I took your advice and it's really working great for me!" and Paul just fuming mad. People will still be talking about this hundreds of years from now.

myth_buster 11y ago
There is an interview where Paul mimics Michael saying "I'm going to buy The Beatles catalog". Paul at that time thought Michael was joking.
- rudedogg 11y ago
  I found this one where talks about it on Letterman https://youtu.be/f4cVsqUF7GQ?t=181 https://youtu.be/f4cVsqUF7GQ?t=181
  - kyberias 11y ago
    And obviously Paul knows it to be true at the time of this interview.

giarc 11y ago

Stories of up and coming bands signing stupid deals are far to common. Too many greedy managers, record companies and representatives with their hands out when someone gets a bit of fame.

CPLX 11y ago
That may be true, but in this context not totally informative, as the Beatles basically invented the modern concept of hugely successful pop stars who wrote their own songs. There was a lot more for publishers to do to earn their money -- namely find people to record the songs in their catalog -- in the prior model. There wasn't really much of a precedent at the time for what would come to be accepted as a fair deal.
jaredandrews 11y ago
This brings to mind an old, interesting essay written by legendary sound engineer Steve Albini: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 This appears to have been written for the "indie rock" bands that got picked up by major labels after the success of Nirvana. Steve watched a lot of his friends get burned and he breaks down exactly why in this essay.
- threeio 11y ago
  You get upvoted for the negativland reference :)
- mazelife 11y ago
  The most detailed accounting I've come across of the economic realities of the record biz (including the myriad ways an artist can be screwed by his or her label) is the book "So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star" by Jacob Slichter (drummer for Semisonic). It's a really fantastic read I recommend to anyone who wants to be a professional musician or just wants to understand the industry. If you want wild antics and groupies and what not, skip it. But man does it ever go into a lot of technical detail of how the recording industry sausage gets made.
  - 11y ago

bloomingfractal 11y ago

For me that kind of story gives extra justification to abolish copyrights in the way they currently are. Our culture is being held hostage by all these games and the real artists get paid very little. Meanwhile, we technologists should just torrent stuff to make a point and continue to innovate with systems that make copyright obsolete.

realityking 11y ago
Assuming you're a developer or designer, why don't you start by telling your employer you're morally opposed to copyright and would like to see all fruits of your labor to be in the public domain. Please report back how it went.
- Consultant32452 11y ago
  That's an interesting one. Let's say copyright was cut down to maybe 10 years. How much software that's running the world right now would be out of copyright protection? I suspect a significant percentage of the fundamentally important code for our economy is at least 10 years old.

crabasa 11y ago

I find it fascinating that content creators consistently underestimate the durability of their work while technologists overestimate the durability of theirs.

Tloewald 11y ago

I'm confused. I thought that the Beatles' story is ultimately about how clever their rights management was in the end -- supposedly they only sold the rights for records and tapes, and then when CDs became a thing they got to sell them again. Most recently and publicly they reached a deal with Apple for distribution via iTunes. Exactly what was Apple negotiating for if they had lost ownership of their catalog? According to Snopes, they sold the publishing rights to Northern Records. "Paul McCartney and John Lennon (and Lennon's estate, now that he's dead) have always received their 50% songwriter's share of the royalties for all Lennon-McCartney songs." http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/jackson.asp Basically, the Beatles tried to be both the artist and the publisher (Northern Records) and after signing over their publishing rights to Northern Records, lost control of Northern Records. So they're reduced to the position of a merely very successful artist who doesn't own his/her own record company. I also see here that rights revert to the artist after 56 years: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2394325/Sir-Paul-McCartney-set-win-rights-Beatles-catalogue.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2394325/Sir-Pau...

acqq 11y ago
> Exactly what was Apple negotiating for if they had lost ownership of their catalog? There was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Songs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Songs and then there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Records The former company "owns" the older songs and the later the later songs (that is, the "publishing rights"). As far as I understand only the former company and songs (but that was a significant part of all Beatles songs) ended up by Jackson. The article from the Daily Mail you link to is wrong (now who would expect that) saying "Payday: Sir Paul will be able to receive royalties from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road albums" because as far as I understand Abbey Road is an Apple Records album, never owned either by Northern Songs or later Jackson. Now how I know that, which were the Apple Records records? I'm just old enough to have had the vinyl records, and holding them it was immediately obvious which is which: http://thebeatles-collection.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/111.jpg http://thebeatles-collection.com/wordpress/wp-content/upload... vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude#/media/File:Hey_Jude_Beatles.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey_Jude#/media/File:Hey_Jude_... Paul apparently has to pay to Northern Songs when he plays his older songs, according to his own words, but is it true? I guess the "LP vs CD rights" story you mention comes from the fact that the newer remixes were made specially for the CD's. But who owns what when remixing the song "owned" by Northern Songs, I don't know. Anybody knows?

frik 11y ago

Michael Jackson also owned Elvis Presley's Catalogue! http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvisnews_lisanothappywithmichael.shtml http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvisnews_lisanothappywithmi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U7SsGjSgR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U7SsGjSgR0

_lce0 11y ago

I like how part-2 closes So what's the lesson here? If you find a way to make a ton of money investing in X, don't tell your friends about it! redacted _X_ was mine

empath75 11y ago
And the corollary: if one of your friends tells you how you can make a ton of money investing in X, he probably has an ulterior motive.

WalterBright 11y ago

No mention of Ringo & George? Looks like they got cut out entirely?

jccc 11y ago
This is about Lennon/McCartney-written songs, which is just about all of them.

akozak 11y ago

I'm very curious how good of an investment it was for MJ, or how Paul and Yoko decided it was a bad investment at the time.

Terretta 11y ago
The article answers this: Sold his $47M stake in ATV to Sony for $90M + half of Sony+ATV. His part soon grew to be worth $1B.

olivermarks 11y ago

http://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/01/13/television-thank-your-lucky-stars/ http://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/01/13/television-thank-your... Dick James was instrumental in the creation of the Beatles showbiz phenomenon, getting them on UK TV talent shows. Easy to forget this seminal effort and stake once the fab 4 became famous. Separately, Michael Jackson also owned the Elvis Presley catalog. He shared ownership of the Beatles catalog with Sony in later years, and there was a lot of bad blood between them. If you are into intrigue it is very hard to find out Jackson's true worth at his death but easy to follow the money afterwards...