A Brief Timeline of Ownership over The Beatles Catalog

Ownership of music is broken into two aspects; who owns the original recordings and who owns the publishing rights, or the songs themselves (independent of any recording). Therefore, publishing rights to a song recorded but not written by The Beatles. For a bit of context, every time an artist's copyrighted song was used for commercial purposes, a licensing fee was then paid to the record label, which in turn paid the artist in royalties. A separate licensing fee was also due to the track's songwriter, which is why some hit songwriters who weren't even performers could rake in guaranteed income for many years after

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[yellowsubmarine]

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[kubricksghost]

So Jackson invested $47 Million to buy the catalogue and potentially could have banked over $1 Billion. That is incredible. Too bad he didn't manage his money correctly or else he would be rolling in $$$. Personally I would have never sold the publishing rights until they expired or whatever.

[mechajay]

5:00 If Paul had a problem with Michael owning the catalog that's on him. He was offered to buy it back himself and he didn't.

[pedrocleto]

When did Universal enter the story? Some Beatles songs on YouTube have "provided by Universal" in their description.

[chairde]

I don’t understand. Why did he sell his rights? If you own 20% do you receive money no matter who owns the majority?

[blakelyhall]

I would be okay with a soulless mechanism of capitalism, who had no part in all in the creation of the music, profiting off of the fruits of my creativity and hard work 🙃

[johnobrien]

Why did The seller sell in 85?
Who was working behind Jackson pulling the strings?
Who gave Jackson the phone no. And access to Macartney?

[ComradeLenin]

Nice try they formed 1957 not all 211 songs were a hit

[randytorrez]

RANDY JUDAH TORREZ <><
What's all this about DURAN DURAN.