Mumbai: Paul McCartney is worth $1.4 billion, making him the world’s third-richest musician, according to Forbes. Ahead of the 84-year-old former Beatle is Jay-Z, who has a fortune of around $2.8 billion, and Taylor Swift, who is worth $2 billion.
According to the Forbes estimate, published on 9 November, McCartney made millions from his music, songwriting and concerts over the years. But a good part of his money also comes from songs he didn’t write.
McCartney became Britain’s first billionaire musician in 2024, when The Sunday Times Rich List put his and his wife Nancy Shevell’s combined wealth at £1 billion. Forbes has now estimated his individual fortune at $1.4 billion.
One of his biggest sources of income is MPL Communications, a music publishing company he set up in 1969, while he was still with The Beatles. The company manages his music, but it also owns the rights to thousands of songs by other artists.
McCartney bought the rights to Buddy Holly’s music, several Broadway musicals and Christmas songs such as It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
That means he earns royalties when people listen to songs like Blue Suede Shoes, or when a school stages a production of Grease. Forbes estimates that MPL alone is worth at least $250 million.
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Still over $50 million a year
And then there’s The Beatles. The band’s company, Apple Corps, makes more than $50 million a year from streaming, vinyl records and merchandise. McCartney gets a quarter of that money, with the rest going to Ringo Starr and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison.
He also makes at least $10 million a year from his share of The Beatles’ songwriting copyrights. McCartney spent years trying to get back the US rights to songs he wrote with Lennon. Forbes puts the value of those rights at more than $200 million.
The Beatles weren’t always making this kind of money. Their early record deals gave them little control over their music, and the band reportedly earned less than a penny for every album sold.
In a 2017 essay for Forbes, McCartney described one of their early publishing agreements as “basically a slave contract”. No matter how successful the band became, he said, the musicians didn’t get a raise.
Concerts have brought in plenty of money too. Between 2022 and 2025, McCartney performed 79 shows as part of his Got Back tour. He also owns properties in Britain and the United States, as well as an art collection that includes paintings by Picasso and René Magritte.
And he hasn’t stopped making music. McCartney released his latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, in May 2026. Earlier this year, he was also the subject of Man on the Run, a documentary directed by Morgan Neville about his life after The Beatles.
(Edited By Janaki Pande)