Sir Paul McCartney: The rich one - Live at Crossed Wires

Summary

Good Bad Billionaire: Sir Paul McCartney – The Rich One (Live at Crossed Wires)

Podcast: Good Bad Billionaire
Hosts: Simon Jack (BBC Business Editor) & Zing Tsjeng (Journalist, Author, Podcaster)
Episode Date: July 20, 2026
Location: Live at Crossed Wires Festival, Sheffield
Subject: The journey of Sir Paul McCartney from working-class Liverpool to billionaire—and the good, bad, and complex legacies of his business empire.

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Main Theme/Overview

This live episode dives deep into Paul McCartney’s life—not just as a musician, but as a businessman and billionaire. Hosts Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng chart McCartney’s financial evolution, unpack his key business deals (good and bad), his cultural and economic legacy, and debate, with an audience, whether he’s a “good billionaire,” “bad billionaire,” or just another billionaire.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. McCartney’s Humble Origins and Early Influences

• Born in war-torn Liverpool in 1942, to a nurse and a cotton salesman—no silver spoon, just "a passion for music" from his jazz-bandleader father.
  (05:08 Simon Jack)
• Early adversity shaped his resilience; the loss of his mother at 14 bonded him with John Lennon, who suffered similar tragedy.
  (06:04–07:26)

2. The Making of The Beatles

• The band’s early years: skiffle bands, squalid club gigs in Hamburg, name changes (Johnny and the Moondogs, The Silver Beatles), and relentless gigging forged their unity and skill.
  (07:52–10:15)
• First manager Alan Williams took 10%; Hamburg club scene was “finishing school” for the Beatles.
  (08:37–10:34)

3. Breaking Through to Global Fame—but Not Fortune

• Brian Epstein becomes manager (25%), stylish branding, and the Ed Sullivan Show (1964) launches Beatlemania in the USA—watched by 73 million.
  (11:07–15:13)
• Early record deals were poor: “EMI were paying the Beatles 1p for every single sold... they were getting around 3% or one-thirtieth of the sale price”
  Simon Jack (15:51–16:43)
• “For every million singles...Paul would end up getting just £663.”
  Zing Tsjeng (16:43–17:31)

4. The Barriers to Getting (and Keeping) Wealth

• Immense UK tax rates (90%+ above £2k), disastrous merchandise deals (lost 90% profits), and poor publishing arrangements kept early Beatles from cashing in like modern stars.
  (17:52–18:55)
• "The system was essentially designed to stop people from becoming millionaires, let alone billionaires."
  Zing Tsjeng (18:37)

5. Becoming a Millionaire: The 1960s

• Despite bad contracts and high taxes, by mid-60s McCartney was declared a millionaire in pounds, and comfortably a dollar millionaire.
  (19:52–20:13)

6. From Millionaire to Billionaire: Smarter Management and Battles

• Post-Beatles, legal wrangling over rights led McCartney to found MPL Communications, buying other catalogs when blocked from regaining his own.
  (31:31–31:56)
• “He would make money from someone else’s...” purchasing Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins catalogs.
• “The Beatles was basically McCartney’s own business school.”
  Zing Tsjeng (33:05)
• Sues (multiple times) over the Apple name, finally settling with Apple (Steve Jobs) for $500 million, paving the way for Beatles’ streaming rights.
  Simon Jack (33:05–34:13)

7. Song Rights: A Fortunes Lost and Won

• Original Lennon/McCartney songs published under “Northern Songs”—deal left them with just 20% each, then only 15% after IPO.
  (27:32–28:09)
• Dick James sells rights to ATV; later, Michael Jackson buys ATV, including Beatles’ catalog—McCartney furious ("I imagine what he wanted, wanted to say was pretty unrepeatable after that." Simon Jack, 32:18)
• US law eventually gifts McCartney back some song rights; elsewhere, the battle continues.
  (32:25–32:49)

8. Modern Wealth—How Did He Get to a Billion?

• Lucrative solo touring—an estimated $1B in gross ticket sales, $60M per tour take-home.
  Zing Tsjeng (35:08)
• Property holdings: mansions in London, Scotland, Hamptons, AZ, etc., worth tens of millions.
  (37:55–38:07)
• Divorce (Heather Mills)—£25M payout made little dent.
  (34:13–34:42)
• Winds of the streaming era: “Now with streaming, your financial relationship with the band goes on and on.”
  Simon Jack (34:13)

9. Legacy, Giving, and Controversy

• Generous with charities, especially animal rights and Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
  Zing Tsjeng (38:07)
• Has a private jet, luxury estates, and the obligatory billionaire trappings.
• Not embroiled in major scandal; biggest “controversy” is hardball business tactics and a drug bust in Japan (1/10 for controversy).
  (39:12–40:13)
• Cultural “power” off the charts—enormous influence, global recognition, unique longevity.
  (40:13–41:14)

10. Audience Verdict and Hosts' Scorecard

• Audience members debate McCartney’s “good billionaire” status, some pointing out hypocrisy (buying rights of other artists after being burned himself), others lauding him as an everyman who fought the system.
  Beth (41:36), Eric (42:08)

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Notable Quotes & Highlights

• “Songwriting royalties are super valuable, piece of IP (intellectual property)...they're a big part of how Paul McCartney made his money—and maybe not how you thought. It was not straightforward, that tale.” – Simon Jack (03:24)

• “For every million singles the Beatles sold...Paul would end up getting just £663.” – Zing Tsjeng (16:43)

• “I think some of that, you know, what we've seen as a pattern is that, you know, early adversity, sometimes determination, resilience, ability to bounce back after knocks, you know, everything doesn't go your way, you keep trying. I think those are some of the qualities we've come across.” – Simon Jack (07:39)

• “Beatlemania had well and truly hit America. They drew an audience of 73 million.” – Zing Tsjeng (15:13)

• “He would make money from someone else's. So he used mpl, the company he'd set up to buy the rights for some of the rock and roll classics of his youth...And gradually, MPL actually became one of the world's largest privately owned music publishers.” – Simon Jack (31:31)

• “If there's any justice in the world, Paul McCartney will be richer than Taylor Swift. But there isn't any justice in the world.” – Simon Jack (38:44)

• “There was a big reaction to Michael Jackson buying their intellectual property...But he would do the same.” – Audience Member Beth (41:59)

• “Paul is obviously a very good billionaire by billionaire standards. He was an ordinary lad who loved his music. He found the system was out to exploit him, so he learned how to fight the system.” – Audience Member Eric (42:20)

• “It's interesting...Spotify playlists and Apple and Amazon...will continue to pay the estate of that person for decades to come.” – Simon Jack (43:13)

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Important Timestamps

• [01:00] – The Beatles’ Ed Sullivan debut and immediate fame
• [05:08–07:26] – McCartney’s early life, childhood, and tragedy
• [10:15] – The Hamburg years: musical apprenticeship and first taste of earning
• [13:23] – Final lineup: the Fab Four and the first professional contracts
• [15:51–16:43] – The economics of Beatles’ early record contracts
• [19:52–20:13] – The Beatles reach millionaire status
• [23:24] – Apple Corps: Beatles’ attempt at business autonomy
• [27:32–28:09] – Publishing rights disaster: Northern Songs and loss of ownership
• [31:31] – McCartney pivots to acquiring others’ publishing catalogs
• [33:05–34:13] – The Apple v. Apple legal saga and $500M settlement
• [35:08] – The modern McCartney: touring income, divorce, and wealth
• [38:07] – Philanthropy, properties, and jet-setter lifestyle
• [41:36–41:59] – Audience Q&A: the hypocrisy debate
• [44:12] – Live audience finds McCartney a "good billionaire"

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Hosts’ Ratings (Scorecard Summary)

• Wealth:
  5/10 (Relative to other billionaires, but impressive rise from working class beginnings.)
• Controversy:
  1/10 (“Not particularly controversial,” mostly legal/business wrangling and minor drug bust)
• Power:
  7–8/10 (Cultural and influence capital, global reach.)
• Legacy:
  10/10 (Simon gives an 11/10: “Turn it up to 11!” (40:54))

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Audience Verdict

• The Sheffield audience votes Paul McCartney a “good billionaire”—an ordinary boy who fought back against exploitation, balanced with some criticism of his own later IP acquisition practices.
  • “If there's a world where Paul McCartney doesn't exist in the future, he will still continue to earn...the ability to continue to earn after death.” – Michael (42:39)

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Conclusion

Paul McCartney’s journey from council estate to global billionaire is marked as much by hard-fought business lessons and IP battles as by phenomenal musical legacy. His story is one of adaptation—overcoming adversity, learning from exploitation, and ultimately building a fortune and cultural imprint that will long outlive him. The audience, like the hosts, sees him as a “good billionaire” by their playful, wholly unscientific standards.

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For feedback, further billionaire debates, and future episode suggestions, the hosts invite listener participation—details in show notes and via email at [e-mail].

Transcript

[Simon Jack]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.

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[Simon Jack]

It's February 1964. A 21 year old lad from Liverpool is in New York City. He's crossed the Atlantic for a so here he is.

[Zing Seng]

He's at work on Broadway in a theater that's been converted into a TV studio. And he is sweating under bright lights and he's caked in more makeup than he's ever seen before.

[Simon Jack]

Here's with three colleagues, shall we call them? They're all wearing identical buttoned up suits, ties, starch, white shirt collars, same haircuts, of course. Two of them playing guitar, one on drums. He's on bass and lead vocal, bobbing his head around in his own inevitable style, singing a song he wrote himself the previous year.

[Zing Seng]

The balcony is filled with screaming teenage girls and out Across America, 73 million people are watching him.

[Simon Jack]

He and his mates have just become probably the most famous people on the planet. Possibly, as one of them will say, one day more popular than Jesus and one day he'll be richer than Croesus.

[Zing Seng]

Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire live from from the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield.

[Simon Jack]

Yay. And on our podcast, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made all that money.

[Zing Seng]

We take them from zero to a million, then from a million onto a billion.

[Simon Jack]

I'm Simon Jack, I'm the BBC's business editor.

[Zing Seng]

And I'm Zing Seng. I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

[Simon Jack]

And for anyone new to this podcast, this is the place to find out about billionaires. Now, some people think the very idea of billionaires is horrific. It's inequality on steroids. Other people think they are aspirational. Our mission today is to find out how they got so rich. And then we'll ask you, our audience here in Sheffield, if you think today's billionaire is good, bad, or just another billionaire. And that opening scene was Paul McCartney on the Ed Sullivan Show. Back in 1964, that was the moment the Beatles broke America. And a couple of years before John Lennon controversially claimed they were more famous than Jesus. Do you remember before you'd ever heard of Paul McCartney?

[Zing Seng]

No. I grew up with his music like everyone else in the audience here probably

[Simon Jack]

my parents are both Scousers, so there was never a time. In fact my mum was about two years younger than he was and basically it was folklore that she knew lots of people who'd been out with all the Beatles.

[Zing Seng]

I feel like every girl in Liverpool at that time must have been like, yeah, I went on a date with Paul McCartney. Didn't work out though.

[Simon Jack]

Any favorite songs? My favorite is In My Life Yesterday. That was one of his most famous ones. Blackbird. I can actually play. On the guitar, he boasted Norwegian wood. Another good one.

[Zing Seng]

A deep cut.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, well, the frog chorus. Yeah, one of his all time best. Saw her standing there. Okay, good. Saw her standing there. You almost sang that. And I just have to warn you that we are in big trouble if anyone actually sings the song copyright, they are very possessive of that. You could bankrupt us right here, right now. And songwriting royalties are super valuable. Piece of IP that's intellectual property. Comes up a lot in the podcast that we do. They're a big part of how Paul McCartney made his money. And maybe not how you thought. It was not straightforward, that tale.

[Zing Seng]

So Paul McCartney is credited with writing over 500 songs. He's also performed over 2,500 gigs. Biggest band in history. But know we're not just here to tell the story of Paul McCartney the musician. We're here to focus on the story of Paul McCartney the businessman.

[Simon Jack]

So how exactly did he take the long and winding road from beetle to billionaire? Let's go back and take Paul McCartney from zero to his first million.

[Zing Seng]

Paul McCartney was born during the Second World War in June 1942 in Liverpool. He was christened James Paul McCartney after his dad James. But to avoid any confusion, he was known as Paul.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, James dad, who was actually known as Jim, did various jobs during the war. When it ended, he returned to Liverpool as a career as a cotton salesman.

[Zing Seng]

And his mum Mary was a trained nurse who became a midwife. And that job meant that the family who lived in rented rooms throughout Paul's got to move into a rent free council house when he was about 4 years old.

[Simon Jack]

So no silver spoon, not a wealthy start to life. But Paul did inherit one very important thing. A passion for music. His dad led a jazz band in the 1920s. Led Sing Alongs at family gatherings, often of his own compositions, which was pretty unusual in those days. He even wired headphones through the floorboards so Paul and his younger brother Mike could listen to the radio when they bent to bed tonight.

[Zing Seng]

And radio got poured into all kinds of music. Show tunes, jazz, folk songs, skiffle, if anyone's a fan of skiffle, a very popular youth music in the 50s. And it was also where Paul discovered rock and roll. So he heard Elvis sing Heartbreak Hotel and he fell in love with singers like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and they all wrote their own songs as well as singing them.

[Simon Jack]

But his own musical career got off to a bit of a shaky start. He got turned down by the boys choir at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral when he was 11 years old, and he was rejected because he couldn't read music. He never did learn to read music. Interesting.

[Zing Seng]

Well, the defining event of his childhood was actually a tragedy. The death of his mother Mary, happened when he was just 14 years old in 1956. And, you know, it's impossible to know the effect of Mary's death on Paul, the full impact. But just a month after she died, Paul went to see a British skiffle superstar called Lonnie Donegan and decided he wanted to play guitar.

[Simon Jack]

So he swapped a trumpet he'd been given that birthday for a Zenith acoustic guitar with a sunburnt which cost 15 quid. Soon he was using it not just to play songs, but crucially, of course, for this story to write them.

[Zing Seng]

Losing his mum was something that really bonded him with a tough local boy who was a couple of years older than him he met at church Fte in 1957.

[Simon Jack]

Any guesses?

[Zing Seng]

Can anyone guess who that is?

[Simon Jack]

Yes. He famously went to see John Lennon's skiffle group, the Quarry Men.

[Zing Seng]

Yes, exactly. This was at a church hall on the 6th of July, 1957. It's a date that's gone down in musical history. And Paul soon joined the band. And a younger guy called George Harrison, who was, I think, an even better guitarist than Paul or John, joined very shortly afterwards.

[Simon Jack]

So soon Paul or John were writing music together. And then in 1958, John's mother was hit by a car and killed. And that tragedy, in a way, mutual tragedy, kind of a bonding thing between them.

[Zing Seng]

And also, you know, on Good Bad Billionaire, we've done lots of stories where people have gone through early tragedies and it's had the effect of kind of making them almost more determined, determined, resilient.

[Simon Jack]

And I think some of that, you know, what we've seen as a pattern is that, you know, early adversity, sometimes determination, resilience, ability to bounce back after knocks, you know, everything doesn't go your way, you keep trying. I think those are some of the qualities we've come across.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. And definitely something that serves you very well in music as well, because over the next few years the Quarrymen became Johnny and the Moondogs. Terrible name. Then the Rainbows Bad. And then the Silver Beatles getting there. And band members changed. They played gig after gig, sometimes they passed around a hat to collect some

[Simon Jack]

cash and eventually they stumbled on a name that stuck. So the Silver Beatles was two E's. They changed the second E to an A beat, of course, and they made their debut billed as the Beatles in August 1960 at a little club in Liverpool. Anyone?

[Audience Member]

Wrong?

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, it was called the Jacaranda and it was a coffee bar where the band used to hang out. We'll come back to Cavan, I'm sure, yeah.

[Zing Seng]

Now, the Jacaranda was actually owned by a guy called Alan Williams and Williams became the Beatles very first manager, taking 10% of their earnings and he got the Beatles a major booking, a residency in Hamburg, Germany.

[Simon Jack]

And this was really the making of the band in many ways. Back then, Hamburg was a thriving port city. Still is, with a busy club scene. Liverpool had a burgeoning music scene dubbed Mersey Beat and lots of young bands from Liverpool were going over to Hamburg to ply their trade. Both port towns had a similar kind of vibe going on. Beatles one of many British groups which are out there.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, But Paul, who was still in school at the time, sent his head teacher a letter saying he wouldn't be back because he booked a job in Germany and he proudly pointed out that he'd be paid 15 quid a week, which was just above UK average wages at the time. So he's doing quite well for himself.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Although Paul's brother said his mum would never have allowed him to quit school to do this. But Jim, the musician, of course, wanted his boys to follow their dreams. I think that is such a crucial moment. Can you imagine? I just, you know, if the parents. If Jim had said no way and the mother had still been alive, who knows where we'd be today.

[Whole Foods Market Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

Paul McCartney, the doctor.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

Well, at this point, the Beatles were actually a five piece. So there was John, Paul, George on guitar, John's friend Stuart Sutcliffe. There was also a new recruit on drums. Can anyone guess who that was?

[Simon Jack]

I heard Pete Best over here.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, that's right.

[Simon Jack]

Absolutely. Right, Pete Best was in the Beatles at that time now in Hamburg it wasn't an easy life they lived in pretty squalid conditions they were playing long sets in clubs in the red light district they started wearing tight leather outfits they were taking drugs to keep them awake they became quite a raucous act

[Zing Seng]

in a way yeah and you know, importantly playing all night, six nights a week great practice so it made them better musicians, it made them a better band Hamburg was a bit like, I guess, finishing school for the Beatles and Stewart quit there so Paul reluctantly moved from guitar to bass and the band

[Simon Jack]

went there back regularly they earned up to £300 each for three month stints out there and at this point the Beatles is now becoming Paul's job But he wasn't getting rich, he did have other jobs he got occasional work he was a second man in a van to helping unload it apparently he slept

[Zing Seng]

in the back of the van between stops because he'd be tired from gigging

[Simon Jack]

all night yeah, he was working on winding coils for electrical engineers a job he said he was useless at but

[Zing Seng]

he also quit that job when the Beatles booked another important residency the one that a lot of you mentioned the Cavan Club in Liverpool and there the

[Simon Jack]

band earned £10 evening shows, £5 for lunchtime performances and the Cavern is where prominent local entrepreneur, business owner and key character in this story Brian Epstein first saw them he fell in love with the band, especially with John actually, and decided to manage them and by now the Beatles had split with their original manager, Alan Williams who threatened to sue them over an unpaid share of their salary for a Hamburg residency that they booked themselves Managers don't like you going off on your own doing that no,

[Zing Seng]

Brian set up a meeting Paul, often thought of as the most reliable Beatle and the most business focused one, actually failed to turn up completely because he was in the bath and at the time Brian was fuming he said he'll

[Simon Jack]

be very late but very clean, joked George and that was part of their charm actually in the Beatles they were always wise, cracking and the Americans loved that Anyway, they soon signed a deal an important moment in the business story of Paul McCartney and the professionalization of the Beatles or at least it should

[Zing Seng]

have been yes, because In January in 1962, John, Paul, George and Pete signed an agreement that would give Epstein 10 to 15% of their earnings for five years but crucially, Epstein never signed it

[Simon Jack]

himself and actually it wouldn't have even been legal because if you were under 21 in the UK at that time you needed a guardian to sign a deal like this John was the only Beatle at that time over 21 Nonetheless, Brian started work and quickly started getting

[Zing Seng]

some results he upped the Beatles minimum fee, he got them more gigs outside Liverpool and Hamburg he even started paying each member of the band a weekly wage of 20 quid from the company

[Simon Jack]

payroll and although it had been a key part of their appeal to him personally, Brian also had them ditch their leather look and kitted them out in suits instead with their mop top hair, the smart suits, the early Beatles look was now in place now the top priority was getting the Beatles a record

[Zing Seng]

deal so you might know the Beatles notoriously failed their audition for Decca Records But Brian relentlessly searched for a label that would sign the band and eventually he stumbled upon Parlophone Records owned by the music giant emi, which you might have heard of run by a very well spoken record producer by the name of George Martin. Martin auditioned the Beatles in the EMI studio on Abbey Road in London and he was convinced by the band, utterly convinced except for one detail, the drummer

[Simon Jack]

this is an interesting story because secretly John, Paul and George had already agreed among themselves that Pete wasn't up to the job so they ditched him and in Pete's place they poached their mate Ringo Starr he was a drummer in a very hot Mersey beat band around

[Zing Seng]

at the time so we've got the fab four John, Paul, George and Ringo finally together and Brian even sorted out a contract that him, John and Ringo so the oldest Beatles and actually signed along with George and Paul's dads because they were still under 21 so this is a band of varying ages and Brian would now take 25% of all their earnings which does sound like a lot but some music managers at the time took as much as 40% and it doesn't really matter because the Brian and the boys were about to hit

[Simon Jack]

the big time yeah Love me Do, the first single was released in October 1962. It charted at 17 and from then on it was only One Direction. The follow up single Please Please Me went to number two From Me to youo hit number one as did she Loves yous, I Want hold you'd Hand Can't Buy Me Love single after single after single in a record breaking run

[Zing Seng]

that followed thank you for not singing

[Simon Jack]

any of those yes, thank you.

[Zing Seng]

Meanwhile, the Beatles first album stayed at number one in the UK charts for 30 weeks only to be replaced by their second album the band played lucrative package tours, they appeared on TV they were commanding fees of 300 quid a night, which is real money back in 1963.

[Simon Jack]

Plus the Beatles were selling literally millions of records that year. This was the start of Beatlemania and soon folks in the US started taking notice. So talk show Ed Sullivan, this is where we came in, invited the Beatles to appear on his show.

[Zing Seng]

Brian headed to New York to ink the deal, got them a ten grand fee and by the time the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964, Beatlemania had well and truly hit America. They drew an audience of 73 million.

[Simon Jack]

73 million. I mean that is massive, Huge, huge.

[Zing Seng]

And that was more than a third of the population of the whole country at the time, by the way. It set a record for television viewership and within a year the Beatles would play to 56 million fans at Shea Stadium, the world's first ever stadium rock show.

[Simon Jack]

I did not know that was the first stadium rock show, I must say.

[Zing Seng]

Well, it set a precedent for rock shows ever since.

[Simon Jack]

And you've seen the footage of that, right? You can't actually really hear the music, all you can hear is the screaming. And you know, and the band were looked this tiny little band with a little drum kit and what, a couple of little amplifiers in this massive stadium with people screaming. It was a real phenomenon at the time.

[Zing Seng]

So now Paul McCartney's one of the most famous people in the world, but is he actually a millionaire?

[Simon Jack]

You'd think so, wouldn't you? With all of that you'd think he'd, he must be a millionaire. The fact is that in the uk, my business editor hat on here, it was pretty hard to become a millionaire in the 1960s. Brian's lack of music industry experience wasn't helping them get rich. The original steal he'd stuck with EMI wasn't that great. EMI were paying the Beatles 1p for every single soles. Now back then a 7 inch single cost 6 shillings and threepence thruppence in old money and old money's pretty complicated, that's about six quid pounds today. So 1p was the equivalent of 19 pence today. So they were getting around 3% or 1 30th of the sale price of each record. And their contract stipulated that even that was only paid on 85% of the records that were sold because 15% was reserved for records damaged and what have you. So they're not making a very big slice of what is becoming a very big pie.

[Zing Seng]

So this meant basically for every million singles the Beatles sold then after Epstein took his 25% and the remaining money was split between the four Beatles. Paul would end up getting just 663 pounds.

[Simon Jack]

Check that out. For every million singles sold, you got £663. Now, having said that, that was similar to the average annual UK salary at the time, but it meant they would have to sell over one and a half billion singles to make a million each. Plus they had an even worse deal on their sales outside the uk. So from record sales, the Beatles were paid only about 400,000. That's between four of them in total from 1962 to 1966. And given how famous they were, that seems incredible. So Paul didn't make Paul a millionaire, but he and the other Beatles did have some other sources of income.

[Zing Seng]

So to start with, they would be paid more than a $0.01 a copy for album sales. Plus, Lennon and McCartney got an additional royalty on all record sales because they wrote the songs. But even though they set up their own publishing company called Northern Songs in 1962, the deal they'd actually struck wasn't actually that great. And we will come back to that, because that is an important part of

[Simon Jack]

the story, really important part of the story. Another income stream was Beatles merchandise merch. Brian had struck a disastrous US merch deal, giving away 90% of the profits.

[Zing Seng]

But important to note, Beatles were making good money from all those stadium and live shows. That Shea Stadium Show 1965 netted each Beatle 40 grand alone. And when they returned to the same venue in 1966, they were paid even more to despite 11,000 tickets going unsold.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, but one of the biggest factors holding the Beatles back in terms of getting rich, which is what we're here to talk about, was the tax, was the UK tax system. George famously wrote a song called the Tax Man, Don't Hum it, complaining about all the tax they paid in the 1960s. It was like 19 for you and one for me, I seem to remember.

[Zing Seng]

And UK top tax rates in the 60s were huge, so 90% over 90% actually on anything above two grand. So even if Paul McCartney did earn a million, he'd keep less than 100 grand. So the system was essentially designed to stop people from becoming millionaires, let alone billionaires.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, I mean, it's got a super tax. Quite a lot of people who were rich left the UK at that time because they've just, you know, they complained about the tax system. The thing is, the Beatles were making an incredible amount of money in the 1960s.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. I mean, they released 13 albums, 22 singles, sold hundreds of millions of records. Before they quit performing live, they played over 1,400 gigs. They also made five movies. If anybody's watched them, you know, including things like A Hard Day's Night, Help. All of these were box office hits.

[Simon Jack]

All of this activity would have comfortably made Paul a millionaire by the mid-60s. In fact, as early as 1964, Time magazine reported that each Beatle had become, in fact a pound millionaire. The Daily Mail estimated the Beatles had earned 56 million doll in that same year. But even using the formula of deducting Brian's 25%, splitting the rest between the four Beatles, taking 90% off for tax, it still makes each Beatles just about a millionaire in UK pounds.

[Zing Seng]

So minus all these expenses, we can still say that they were comfortably dollar millionaires. So in 1964, let's say Paul McCartney, you're officially a millionaire.

[Whole Foods Market Advertiser]

This is summer at its peak. Whole Foods Market Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season fresh, organic and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto and artisanal cheese. Then fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever, proteins and fresh produce. Savor the season. Shop Summer Fruit Fest at Whole Foods Market.

[Simon Jack]

I cashed out my entire 401 thinking someone stole my identity.

[Zing Seng]

A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to

[Simon Jack]

a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

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[Simon Jack]

I'm officially back in my rom com

[Gen Digital Advertiser]

era and honestly feels like home.

[Simon Jack]

And this is Brett Goldstein. Our new movie Office Romance is now streaming only on Netflix. We cannot wait for you to see it. Sign up now to watch. Okay, well done. First staging post on the way to a billion. So how did he go from a million to a billion?

[Audience Member]

Zing.

[Zing Seng]

So to start with, by 1964, the Beatles accountants were already managing to find legal ways of shielding the band's earnings from tax. And this is an interesting little bit of Triv. They actually filmed scenes from the movie Help in the Bahamas, specifically to make it easy for them to set up offshore accounts there to avoid UK tax. But Brian thought having offshore accounts was actually a very bad look for the Beatles in the Fab Four, so he had them shut down.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, much more sensitive than people are about billionaires these days with their offshore accounts. Anyway, one thing that wasn't taxed, though, was property. So Paul and the rest of the Beatles could invest without anything going to the Exchequer. In 1965, Paul bought a big house in St John's Wood, conveniently right around the corner from the recording studios in one of London's poshest neighborhoods. Cost Paul 40 grand back then. He spent another 20,000, giving it a bit of a makeover. But recent valuations suggest that house is now worth £17 million, $23 million. And it's thought to still be his main residence. Still lives there?

[Zing Seng]

Well, Paul also bought an estate on the mull of Kintyre in remote southwest Scotland for 35 grand. It later inspired a hit song and is now worth something like £4 million. So, well done, Paul.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, and very early on, the Beatles set up companies to manage their money and try and shield them from. So in 1963, accountants told them there was £2 million they could either use to set up a company or give straight to the Inland Revenue. So they set up Beatles Ltd. And when that morphed into Beatles Co. In 1967, a new company structure meant the Beatles paid corporation tax rather than what they were paying on income tax.

[Zing Seng]

So they also improved their deal with EMI in 1966, but that really wasn't as good a deal as it could have been. So, in general, you can safely say the Beatles business deals throughout the 60s were pretty murky. And the truth is, is that Brian Epstein lacked a lot of music industry knowledge. It showed. And the Beatles themselves only really got a sense of the mess that Brian had got them in after his sudden death from an accidental overdose in 1967.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, at the time, everyone was devastated by Brian's death, but John Lennon, later, on reflection, said he thought that Brian had ripped them all off post.

[Zing Seng]

Brian. The band tried to manage their own affairs for a while. They set up Apple Corps, which they envisaged as a kind of multimedia conglomerate with a kind of hippie peace and love vibe. You know, they were all wearing tunics at the time, with long hair. Nice idea. And of the Beatles, Paul actually showed the most amount of business acumen when it came to running it.

[Simon Jack]

But by 1968, this company, Apple, was hemorrhaging money. John even went public to declare the Beatles were in a cash crisis. This didn't go down well with Paul. He'd been working behind the scenes to try and sort things out.

[Zing Seng]

And eventually Rolling Stones manager Alan Klein became the Beatles business manager and he did manage to improve some of their deals. They even started releasing Beatles records on their own Apple label in the United States.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, in other ways, Klein was a disastrous hire and in some ways was seen as a catalyst for the Beatles breakup. Paul says he felt forced into hiring him and later said the event was the first irreconcilable difference the band ever had.

[Zing Seng]

Paul actually wanted experienced entertainment lawyers Lee and John Eastman to take over. They also just so happened to be the father and the brother of his brand new American girlfriend, Linda.

[Simon Jack]

So by the time Paul McCartney publicly announced he was leaving the Beatles in 1970, he admitted to being tired of arguing with his bandmates about money. So was it Yoko? Was it Whatever. The money differences were a big factor in this. Worst of all, he'd lost the rights to all the hit songs he and John had written. Now, songwriting royalties, as we were saying, are important piece of intellectual property. They can make a songwriter a lot of money, especially a songwriter who written as many hits as Paul McCartney. To give brief explanation, musicians get sort of performance royalty. So even when a recording of a song they played on is played on the radio or used in a film, they get a payment. Songwriters also get a payment and they get whoever plays their song. So even it's a cover. And don't forget, Beatles songs have been covered by, you know, hundreds of other artists. And the value of those songwriting royalties can be massive. And they last 70 years beyond the lifetime of the songwriter. And we've talked about all this before, on Good Bad Billionaire, for example. The Taylor Swift example is Taylor Swift

[Zing Seng]

went to war over intellectual property and she triumphed from the end. Which just goes to show that songwriting royalties and intellectual property, I mean this stuff is worth a literal fortune, but amazing. Exactly. And if you want to listen to

[Simon Jack]

that, check out that episode. Check it out, it's a good one.

[Zing Seng]

Now, early on, John and Paul made this very important decision to have equal co writing credit on all of the Beatles songs. And it meant that Lennon and McCartney basically split those royalties equally, even though John and Paul actually stopped writing together quite early on, yeah, you can definitely

[Simon Jack]

tell a McCartney song from a Lennon song, I think.

[Zing Seng]

And this is a really important decision. Right. Because whether it made or cost Paul money is actually quite hard to say, because Paul was arguably responsible for what are the most commercially successful songs.

[Whole Foods Market Advertiser]

Right.

[Zing Seng]

Hey Jude, biggest seller yesterday, is thought to be the most covered song in pop culture history, with over 2,200 versions recorded. So, you know, Paul actually maybe lost out a bit.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, maybe. But more important is a deal that Paul and John signed in 1962 that Brian had set up with a guy called Dick James, who became their publisher. And as we mentioned earlier, they set up a company to manage their publishing rights and called it Northern Songs. Now, this deal gave 50% to the publisher, Dick James, which was a standard split in those days. John and Paul had 20% each. Brian Epstein took around 9%, which definitely isn't normal. George and Ringo had a share of about 1% each. So bear in mind these are important numbers. John and Paul only have 20% of the company that published their songs, And

[Zing Seng]

a bad, bad deal for George and Ringo, I have to say. Now, at the time, the Beatles said they would literally sign anything that Brian put in front of them. So that deal was really bad. But then things got much worse.

[Simon Jack]

Yes, and this is because in 1965, Northern Songs had what they call an IPO, initial public offering, selling shares to the public. And that was another move to try and ease John and Paul's tax burden. There were some tax efficiencies there, and at the time, it gave each of them what seemed like a big windfall, around £95,000, tax free, by the way, this is in the days before capital gains tax, but it reduced their ownership of their own catalog down to 15% each, these important numbers.

[Zing Seng]

And by 1969, Paul had come to understand the true value of copyright. He wanted to buy back his own catalog of songs. And with the help of the Eastmans, he set up his own company, mpl, to try and facilitate. But the publisher, Dick James, instead sold his shares to another company, atv, and they became majority owners and forced, essentially, a hostile takeover, making John and Paul sell them their share of their own work, which must have, I think, really

[Simon Jack]

stung to know that creative genius disappear into some corporate kind of labyrinthine maze. And he talks about this to this day, about how big an emotional impact something you've created like that you have a very emotional connection to, and watching it get frustrated by a bunch of business deals must have been absolutely terrible.

[Whole Foods Market Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Simon Jack]

And by the time they Split up in 1970, Paul actually owned no part of his own Beatles songs. And his contract meant even rights to Future Works would also go to atv. Furthermore, he was contracted to Apple Corps for future record releases, even solo ones. So he's basically in a bit of a cul de sac here.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. So in 1971 he takes the dramatic move of taking John, George, Ringo and Apple to the High Court to legally escape and break free from the Beatles, his own band. Something he did eventually manage to do. And the ATV deal was a lot harder to escape though. ATV instigated a million dollar US lawsuit against McCartney when he started issuing solo music.

[Simon Jack]

And he ended up making a bit of a deal with them. He agreed a new seven year contract that would also give him back rights to a few of his Beatles songs. And this is the start of Paul's lifelong attempts to get control back of

[Zing Seng]

his songs and of the very many courtroom battles, too many for us to actually go through to ensure he got what he owed for his time in the Beatles.

[Simon Jack]

Back in 1970, of course, remember the Beatles had split up. This was kind of the biggest news in the world. And he was being blamed for the breakup. And he sunk into a pretty deep depression and by his own omission, hit the bottle, started drinking really heavily.

[Zing Seng]

But he did have a new wife, that woman Linda, who married her the previous year. And the couple had two young girls to look after. Mary, born in 1969, and Heather, Linda's seven year old daughter, who Paul later adopted. So the family basically retreated to that big estate in remote southwest Scotland. And Paul set about rebuilding himself, you know, his life, his career. He started working on new music with Linda. He recorded an album that then began a new band called Wings. And that became a significant touring hit making enterprise in the 70s. You a fan of Wings?

[Simon Jack]

Band on the Run was a pretty good song. The rest I can take or leave. Anyone else? Anyone? Any Wings fans in the audience? Yes. Okay, well, I'll talk to you later. You can make the case for Wings. But. And Linda of course was widely mocked for her musical contributions to this band, wasn't she? Exactly, yeah. But he pulled, in fact, he started co crediting Linda on the. Simply because she wasn't, this is important, she wasn't under contract to atv, so they would keep some of the rights because she was not party to that ATV contract. But I mean clearly she was very crucial to the rebuilding of his, you know, his post Beatles life though.

[Whole Foods Market Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Zing Seng]

And the couple actually stayed together until her early death in 1998. By then she'd inherited a significant fortune from her father. She'd founded her incredibly successful vegetarian food company, Linda McCartney Food. Paul famously remains vegetarian.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, and it had been Linda's entertainment lawyer, father and brother who'd really explained music copyright to Paul. And it made him determine that even if he couldn't make money from his own back catalog, he would make money from someone else's. So he used mpl, the company he'd set up to buy the rights for some of the rock and roll classics of his youth. People like Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly. And gradually, MPL actually became one of the world's largest privately owned music publishers.

[Zing Seng]

But Paul's enthusiasm for music copyright backfired quite dramatically when he explained the value of songwriting IP to a young musician called Michael Jackson in 1982. Three years later, Jackson ended up buying out ATVs catalog, including most of the Beatles songs. Paul was furious. His friendship with Jackson came to a very abrupt end.

[Simon Jack]

Because I remember they did that say, say, say song. I imagine what he wanted, wanted to say was pretty unrepeatable after that.

[Zing Seng]

Unpublishable.

[Simon Jack]

Anyway, Jackson eventually sold the rights of Sony. Paul kept trying to regain control. In 2018, he took Sony to court in the US to reclaim ownership of some songs. Under American law, songwriter copyright eventually returns to the writer. So Sony settled and Paul has finally regained rights to his own songs. There's a 56 year rule, so he's got rights to his own songs in the US at least, but not everywhere.

[Zing Seng]

Songwriting and royalties alone, however, are not what made Paul McCartney a billionaire. Because, you know, after the business failures of the Beatles, he kind of has meticulously managed his solo career. If you think of Hamburg as the Beatles finishing school, then the Beatles was basically McCartney's own business school.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, and since the Beatles, he's carefully protected his copyright in some unexpected ways. One notable windfall came when he and the other Beatles sued the other Apple, Steve Jobs, Apple for infringement of their copyrighted name. He actually sued Apple multiple times over a 30 year period. And the feud came to an end after Jobs launched Apple Music and ended up buying out the Beatles Apple trademark for $500 million. So that's a nice chunk, isn't it? And I remember this because basically the agreement was when Apple set up, they said, we've got no problem with Apple using the Apple name as long as you're not in the music business. But then of course the ipod comes along, then Apple is in the music business. And this is when they basically but $500 million payoff. And that deal paved the way for Beatles songs to start streaming. Because back in the old days, you know, you buy an album, you buy a T shirt, that was it. Your financial relationship with that act is over. But now with streaming, your financial relationship with the band goes on and on. It's like a never ending trickle in some cases, you know, flood of money in other cases which goes on in perpetuity. So it's really changed, especially if you're

[Zing Seng]

the Beatles and people are streaming your music all the time. But, you know, in 2008, Paul divorced his second wife, Heather Mills. Court records at the time showed he was worth 400 million pounds, which was the equivalent of $800 million at the time. So the eventual 25 million pound divorce settlement didn't actually have that much impact on Paul's overall wealth. It's pretty acrimonious though, if you remember the scenes from the court.

[Simon Jack]

I don't think either have a mill or Paul McCartney came out of that one particularly well, didn't they?

[Zing Seng]

Well, I mean, Mills did pour a jug of water over McCartney's lawyer's head at the end of the divorce case.

[Simon Jack]

And the tabloids really went for Heather Mills as well at the time. I remember that. But anyway, since then, Maca's released a prodigious amount of music. This is an interesting step. 27 albums since the Beatles. If you could name more than five of those, you're doing well, I reckon. He's also continued to play huge live shows. Touring's become increasingly lucrative. Remember seeing Glad? That was an amazing set, wasn't it? I think you were there.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, I was there. I actually shed a tear. It's also estimated, by the way, that McCartney's performances have grossed over a billion dollars in total. So Paul takes home about 60 million of that every time he tours.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Simon Jack]

Meanwhile, every aspect of the Beatles back catalog has been rinsed, curated, monetized, from the anthology albums of the 90s to the Beatles one compilation of 2000. He's made money from recent documentaries, the Peter Jackson documentary, which I thought was fascinating. So lots of other money at financial streams here.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. And you know, he's remained also culturally relevant to new generations. I think, you know, he's got collaboration with Rihanna and Kanye. That's actually his most streamed composition. And streaming platforms like Spotify, as we've mentioned, are now major income streams to people like Paul McCartney.

[Simon Jack]

Some of the big artists have complained smaller acts are getting very little from these streaming platforms. But as an artist with billions of streams, he's clearly doing very well out of it, thank you very much.

[Zing Seng]

So, all in all, it's hardly surprising that in 2024, the Sunday Times Rich List estimated that Paul McCartney Macca's wealth had grown to a billion pounds, or about US$1.25 billion.

[Simon Jack]

So he's made it. Paul McCartney is officially a billionaire. But let's go beyond a billion.

[Zing Seng]

This year, the final episode of a show that you might watch that succeeded, the Ed Sullivan show aired on US Television. The Late show with Stephen Colbert needed the most famous guest they could possibly for this special event. So who did they choose? Obviously Macca.

[Simon Jack]

So he, in a wonderful circularity, returned to the same studio where he'd once been watched by 73 million people. Back then, he'd understood that he'd never not be famous again. He knew something big had happened. Now he's aged 84. He reminisced about girls screaming in the balcony, knowing he's still perhaps the most famous person alive. And also in an exclusive club of the very richest.

[Zing Seng]

That is Paul McCartney's story. Now, we are going to rate Paul out of 10 on some of our billionaire categories. Wealth, controversy, power and legacy.

[Simon Jack]

But before we do that, we're going to ask the audience here, this is your chance to vote on whether you think Paul McCartney is good, bad, or just another billionaire. It's a bit of fun. It's a virtual show of hands. Please get involved.

[Zing Seng]

We'll do our own categories first.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, so we'll start with wealth. Now, in our world, he's entry level, bottom of the pile. He's only just scraped over the billion dollar, billion level, but we do look at somehow how far they've come.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, and Paul McCartney, you know, you've got to give it to him. He came from a genuinely working class background and he became a real rock star.

[Audience Member Beth]

Yeah.

[Simon Jack]

He's got an impressive property portfolio. He's got homes in London, Scotland, farming, Sussex, estate in the Hamptons in Long Island, New York, a ranch in Arizona. His property alone is probably worth $75 million.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah, I think also when we talk about his wealth, it's important to acknowledge he's also been very generous with his money. He gives to a range of charities, most notably animal rights charities. He co founded the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, if anyone's familiar with that group.

[Simon Jack]

But he does have the obligatory must have. He's got a $40 million private jet.

[Zing Seng]

Of course he does. Wouldn't expect anything less from Maca.

[Simon Jack]

Okay, so wealth in the rarefied world of billionaires, he's nowhere near the top of the tree. Nevertheless, there's not that many people that we've done who make this kind of money from playing music.

[Zing Seng]

Exactly. Taylor Swift, Beyonce.

[Simon Jack]

Beyonce, Rihanna. Actually, there's more and more of them now. They're getting much better at this than they used to be. So I think if there's any justice in the world, Paul McCartney will be richer than Taylor Swift. But there isn't any justice in the world.

[Zing Seng]

Oh, that's controversial.

[Simon Jack]

Oh, come on.

[Zing Seng]

Swifties are gonna come and get you for that.

[Simon Jack]

Swifties.

[Zing Seng]

Mark's out of ten.

[Simon Jack]

Mark's out of ten. Okay, I'm gonna middle of the pack. Five. Cause he's come from working class background. You know, he was in a council house, so I'm gonna give him five.

[Zing Seng]

I think five out of ten is pretty fair. If you disagree with this, put your hand up and we'll call on you later on.

[Simon Jack]

Okay? All right. So that's five out of 10 from each of us. Controversy. Drugs.

[Zing Seng]

I mean, there was quite a lot of drugs swinging around the Beatles at the time. He was arrested for smuggling weed into Japan in 1980. Actually spent around, I think, nine days in jail. Escaped a possible seven year sentence. You know, so he was a fan of the wacky Backyo Paul.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, but listen, he's not Keith Richards though, is he?

[Zing Seng]

No, that's true. You don't look at Paul McCartney and think, God, how is he still alive?

[Simon Jack]

No, that's true. Obviously, there was the LSD use, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. He's been to court a lot. I mean, I think in a way the controversy is more about the court dealings. Apple Records, you know, finding out Brian had made a mess of it. Going to court against his own bandmates and Apple. That sounds grueling, actually. You know, that kind of sound sounds really demoralizing when you have to do that, I think.

[Zing Seng]

But I think ultimately, you know, that's not particularly controversial. So I would just give him maybe a 1 out of 10.

[Simon Jack]

I think that, you know, Macca, again, 1 out of 10 for controversy.

[Zing Seng]

What about power? So I think Paul McCartney's got an enormous amount of cultural clout. Come on.

[Simon Jack]

I think in terms of cultural capital, I think that, you know, there's never been a band bigger than the Beatles. Whenever they always say, oh, it's like Beatlemania. No, it's not really.

[Zing Seng]

I think our usual gauge of this is, would you be able to call up the president of any country, but especially United States, and he'd take the call. Come On Donald Trump would love to speak to Maca. I don't know if Maca would like to speak to Donald Trump, though.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Okay.

[Zing Seng]

I'm gonna give him eight out of ten for.

[Simon Jack]

Give him seven. And. And then because it's a bit different, we have this other category called legacy. And on this, I'm going to give him 11.

[Zing Seng]

11 out of 10.

[Simon Jack]

We've never given 11.

[Zing Seng]

Turn it up to 11.

[Simon Jack]

Turn it up to 11 said Spinal Tap. Yes, exactly. Is there any. Is there a band with a bigger legacy than the Beatles? There can't be. I mean, just.

[Zing Seng]

It's not the Rolling Stones. Sorry to any Stones fans.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah, no, the thing is, is that, you know, writing, like 10 or 20 hit songs, they wrote hundreds. I mean, you just keep going on and on and on. And, you know, hundreds of amazing songs as well.

[Zing Seng]

I think. I think I'm gonna give them 10 out of 10 because I don't want to mess up the metric we've got. It's not giving 11.

[Simon Jack]

Everything's off, everything's gone. That way. Chaos lies. Okay, fine. 10 out of 10 for both of us. So is Paul McCartney good, bad, or just another billionaire?

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. Before we look at the results.

[Simon Jack]

Before we look at the results, we're

[Zing Seng]

gonna send the mics around. We've got someone there right by the pillar.

[Simon Jack]

Tell us your name as well.

[Audience Member Beth]

Hi, I'm Beth.

[Simon Jack]

Hi, Beth.

[Audience Member Beth]

I generally agree with you down the middle because there's a lot more evil billionaires out there. But I think there's a missing point that he's a bit of a hypocrite. A lot of the sympathy of his law kind of lies in that he wasn't able to own his intellectual property, but when he had enough resources to do so, he bought the intellectual property of artists that went before him.

[Simon Jack]

Right. So basically, he was doing the same thing with Daddy Olly.

[Audience Member Beth]

Yes, he could. He would and he did. And so when there was a big reaction to Michael Jackson buying their intellectual property, I thought. But he would do the same.

[Simon Jack]

And he has been, they will maybe stung by the experience, he became a bit more cynical. There was another one over here. Can I have your name, sir? Hello, I'm Eric. Paul is obviously a very good billionaire by billionaire standards. He was an ordinary lad who loved his music. He found the system was out to exploit him, so he learned how to fight the system. He took them on. He's done very well, so more power to him. Okay, so good billionaire there.

[Zing Seng]

A good billionaire. Okay, let's have. I think the gentleman by the pillar. You had your hand up.

[Audience Member]

Hi, I'm Michael. I suppose, you know, the view that Paul McCartney may still be at the lower threshold at the moment of being a billionaire probably doesn't matter really, does it? Because, I mean, if there's a world where Paul McCartney doesn't exist in the future, he will still continue to earn, as proven by Elvis, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, et cetera, you know, so the ability to continue to earn after death.

[Simon Jack]

It's interesting because basically the estate gets the performing rights or the publishing rights for 70 years after the death of the person who wrote them. And also, I think with the streaming thing as well, I think that's been such a structural change in the music business business, which is that Spotify playlists and Apple and Amazon and whatever will continue to pay the estate of that person for decades to come.

[Zing Seng]

And it just depends on how famous and popular your music.

[Simon Jack]

Which is why, by the way, these, this revenue stream, which goes for a long time, which. Why David Bowie was one of the first people to securitize his future songwriting royalties. Because basically, it's just like a bond. You've got income coming in for a long time, you can give that a current value. And he sells his something at 50, 60 million dollars. Years ago and now a lot of the big acts, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, are selling their back catalog.

[Zing Seng]

And it's also why private equity is also getting massively involved in the music business.

[Simon Jack]

But let us go to the vote. I hope you've all voted here in Sheffield, it is time for the results and you have voted that Paul McCartney is. Drumroll.

[Zing Seng]

A good billionaire.

[Simon Jack]

What a surprise. Now I'd like to thank everyone for turning up to today, the next episode. We'll be back in the studio discussing the Chinese chili oil billionaire Tao Huabi, who I'd never heard of. And then I realized my kids have got this stuff and they put it on everything.

[Zing Seng]

Yeah. If you have Lao Gan Ma chili sauce, you've made her a billionaire.

[Simon Jack]

Yeah. Thank you all so much and I hope you enjoyed it. So thank you so much.

[Zing Seng]

Good Bad Billionaires, a BBC Studios production for the BBC World Service.

[Simon Jack]

It's produced by Mark Ward. Paul Smith is the editor for the

[Zing Seng]

BBC World Service, the senior Community Commissioning Producer, Sarah Green, and the commissioning editors, John Manell.

[Simon Jack]

I cashed out my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity.

[Zing Seng]

A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to

[Simon Jack]

a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

[Gen Digital Advertiser]

When billions of people feel unsafe. That's no longer a security problem. It's an economic one. At jen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Money Lion. See it in [e-mail].