How McCartney and Lennon Lost Ownership of the Beatles Catalogue | Hacker News Reader

How McCartney and Lennon Lost Ownership of the Beatles Catalogue

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97 pointsJacobAldridge40 comments

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

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-Pau...

> Exactly what was Apple negotiating for if they had lost ownership of their catalog?

There was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Songs

and then there was

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/upload...

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?

> 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.

> 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.

"wasn't worth more than $20 million", who did she hear that from Pete Best?

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?

> 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.

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...

I think some of this stems from history. There was a whole music publishing industry far before 'record labels' existed (before recording existed, really).

Could have simply bought it all then given half to Lennon's estate anyway. I don't think Yoko would have actively turned down a free half. Would have hurt paul financially, of course, but far less than it probably has over the last 20+ years.

Why should he hand Yoko, who is swimming in money, $20m of his own? Because of some unrealistic gentleman generosity that only exists in Jane Austin novels?

>Would have hurt paul financially, of course, but far less than it probably has over the last 20+ years.

Maybe he felt maximizing his riches and spending like a loon wasn't within his interests? Or that this wasn't a good investment? I think its obvious now that the post-ipod world and post-baby boomer nostalgia period, etc means that music monetization for oldies is high, but at the time, records and tapes ruled, and their sales weren't exactly inspiring for 60's rock. Disco, New Wave, Punk, etc ruled at this time and the prospect for a big Beatles fan revival seemed low. The new CD format ramped things up a bit and obviously the digial music revolution happened, but to a conservative investor in 1976, well, those would have been very risky trades.

Its also worth noting that ATV bought the rights from Northern Songs for $17m in the late sixties. So just a few years later the negotiate priced went over $40m? Triple the price? Of course, Yoko and Paul balked. In 2015 dollars we're looking at close to $150m for publishing rights. That was unheard of.

Lastly, this is just publishing rights. My understanding is that other royalties were quite profitable for the remaining Beatles and their estates and getting back publishing rights wasn't a high priority for them. All this hand wringing is interesting, but it didn't stop them from getting incredibly wealthy. None of them were remotely in the poor house.

Of course, in England, the taxation for the top earners was something like 80% (more?), so amassing a fortune meant losing all but 20% of it instantly. This probably helped Paul, a UK citizen, make his decision to not bid large on a potential big payout. Lets say he bought the catalog for $50m in 1976 or so and his net worth at the time was $200m. Now he's down to $150m and lets say that investment brings in another $100m in twenty or thirty years. Great, he's now back up to $170m post tax. Still a $30m loss.

> Why should he hand Yoko, who is swimming in money, $20m of his own? Because of some unrealistic gentleman generosity that only exists in Jane Austin novels?

To get (or recover) something of business and sentimental value and have it 'in the family' so to speak. Paul's no dummy, and understood the long term value of publishing rights for music from decades earlier. Could he have predicted digital music? No, but regardless of music format, the Beatles were (even by the 80s) an extremely unique entertainment entity, and weren't going away.

It was a decent amount for either/both of them, but wouldn't have bankrupted either of them. It actually seemed more of a struggle for Jackson to pull things together to make his acquisition happen than it might have been for Paul.

> some unrealistic gentleman generosity

L&M seemed to do just fine with a gentleman's agreement between them for several years re: songwriting splits.

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?

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.

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.

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.

I found this one where talks about it on Letterman https://youtu.be/f4cVsqUF7GQ?t=181

And obviously Paul knows it to be true at the time of this interview.

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

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.

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.

This brings to mind an old, interesting essay written by legendary sound engineer Steve Albini:

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.

You get upvoted for the negativland reference :)

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.

Similar to this is The Daily Adventures of Mixerman,[1] by Eric "Mixerman" Sarafin, which is largely a chronology of his experiences as recording engineer for a bidding-war band with a major-label contract. But he throws in a lot of background about the music business as well as the technology and techniques of recording music. It's also a laugh riot.

[1] https://mixerman.net/the-daily-adventures-of-mixerman/

It's like VC. Most artists cost money, a couple rare ones make some money, one in a million earns like the Beatles. The managers/companies/etc aren't greedy, they're surviving.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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

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

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.

Michael Jackson also owned Elvis Presley's Catalogue!

http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/elvisnews_lisanothappywithmi...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U7SsGjSgR0

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

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.

> 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 (Stanford seminar video) the interesting case starts at 6:00

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.

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.

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