Forbes now values Paul McCartney at $1.4 billion, placing him as the world’s third richest musician. Only Jay-Z, at $2.8 billion, and Taylor Swift, at $2 billion, rank higher in the latest tally.
The number matters because McCartney’s wealth still rests on a business built around songs that have been earning for decades. He derives the bulk of his fortune from MPL Communications, the company he founded in 1969 to manage his own catalog and those of other artists. Forbes says the company’s copyrights from artists such as Buddy Holly, along with Broadway musical scores and Christmas standards, account for nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, while McCartney also earns when high school productions stage Grease or someone streams Blue Suede Shoes.
That steady stream is only part of the picture. McCartney receives 25% of earnings from the Beatles’ Apple Corps holding company, which generates about $50 million annually from streaming residuals and sales of vinyl and merchandise. He also makes around $10 million a year from the Beatles’ songwriting copyrights, which Forbes estimates are worth $200 million. Add revenue from 79 shows on his Got Back tour between 2022 and 2025, plus real estate around the world and paintings by Magritte and Picasso, and the scale of the fortune becomes clearer.
The friction is that this billionaire status is built less on a new blockbuster release than on old songs, catalog ownership and long-running royalty streams. McCartney released his most recent album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, this past May, appeared as the musical guest on the season finale of Saturday Night Live in May, and performed I Want to Hold Your Hand in July as part of Taylor Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden. He was also the subject of Man on the Run, a documentary directed by Morgan Neville, this year.
For McCartney, the ranking is less a surprise than a reminder of how durable music money can be when the rights are owned, the catalog stays active and the songs never stop moving through theaters, streams and merchandise tables. What remains unanswered is how much of the $1.4 billion is tied to rights, touring, property and art separately — but the total already puts him in a class few musicians ever reach.
