Paul McCartney's billion-dollar secret: Owning Christmas and playing the royalty game better than anyone

Paul McCartney is a Billionaire. The legendary rockstar has joined the long list of billionaires with a whopping $1.4 billion, as per Forbes. With this new shining feather in his cap, the former Beatle is now the third richest billionaire behind Jay-Z at $2.8bn and Taylor Swift at $2bn.

McCartney has entered the prestigious club after six decades of singing, entertaining and making the fans across the globe

Paul McCartney is in billion-dollar club

The legendary singer entered the billion-dollar club with the fortune he has accumulated over the years. While a large part of it comes from MPL Communications, the publishing company he started in 1969, months before he split from the iconic band, The Beatles.

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His company manages McCartney's own music catalog along with copyrights of other artists. It also holds catalogs acquired from artists like Buddy Holly, plus Broadway musical scores and Christmas songs.

McCartney played the royalty game way before it even became common. First, he became independent. Before The Beatles broke up, he took control of his own songs, instead of giving most of it to a record label. Not only this, but he also bought other people's songs, so no matter who's song it is, whenever and wherever it is played, his company gets paid and the money is in his pocket.

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MPL is his biggest business now as it owns thousands of songs and earns millions every year. However, the total sum of his earnings also comes from his world tour, Got Back, which ran from 2022 through 2025, plus real estate across the globe and a huge art collection.

How Paul McCartney quietly owns Christmas?

Sir Paul is the secret owner of many songs, but for most don't know is that the joyous earnings also comes from Christmas songs. What we can call his treasure trove of songs, which includes the copyrights to dozens of Christmas classics. From Perry Como's It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas and Mel Torme's The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) to Paul's Wonderful Christmastime, Elvis Presley's Blue Christmas and Baby an Dinah Shore's It's Cold Outside.

That means every December, when these songs play in shops, films, ads and on radio, McCartney gets paid again and again.