The Music Industry

Paul McCartney takes battle for Beatles songs to copyright office

Justin Wm. Moyer

Now, McCartney has fired another fusillade in his battle to reclaim his music. As Billboard first reported, records show McCartney, taking advantage of a law that allows singers to reclaim publishing rights after 56 years, filed a “notice of termination” with the U.S. Copyright Office. The songs on the table include many Beatles masterworks, including “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” — and, for the record, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” one of John Lennon’s least-favorite Beatles songs.

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Publishing rights are, more or less, the right to “exploit” a song — to, for example, license it to a film, TV show or video game. The vast majority of McCartney’s work with the Beatles was credited to “Lennon-McCartney” — but, as the BBC noted, the singers lost their publishing rights in the 1960s when ATV, a publishing company they created with the other Beatles, their manager and outside investors, was sold without their knowledge.

Enter the King of Pop. McCartney and Jackson were collaborators, as anyone who has heard “The Girl is Mine” on “Thriller” or seen the “Say, Say, Say” video knows. And, one day, McCartney started talking to Jackson about music publishing. As J. Randy Taraborrelli recounted in “Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story,” Jackson proved an apt pupil.

When Michael told Paul, “Maybe someday I’ll buy your songs,” Paul laughed.

“Great,” He said. “Good joke.”

Michael wasn’t joking. Paul would one day regret their conversation.

“I gave him a lot of free advice,” he would later say. “And you know what? A fish gets caught by opening his mouth.”

Indeed, after McCartney failed to buy ATV in a $20 million deal with Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, Jackson bought it in for $47.5 million in 1985. McCartney wasn’t happy.

“Someone rang me up one day and said, ‘Michael’s bought your songs,’” McCartney later said. “I said, ‘What??!!’ I think it’s dodgy to do things like that. … To be someone’s friend and then to buy the rug they’re standing on.”

McCartney’s notice of termination is an attempt to get the rug back. But what is a notice of termination?

As Billboard explained: “In order to reclaim publishing ownership of a song, a songwriter must file with the U.S. Copyright Office, terminating the publishing anywhere from 2 to 10 years before the 56 years elapse, in order to obtain ownership of that song’s publishing in a timely manner. (If the writer doesn’t put in a notice within that window, they have another five-year period to reclaim the copyrights but each day’s delay adds another day that the publisher owns the copyright.)”

The 56-year waiting period on many of the songs McCartney wants back doesn’t expire until 2025 — the year the man who wrote “When I’m 64” turns 83. It’s also worth noting that McCartney is only seeking his share of the publishing rights — not Lennon’s or anyone else’s — and only in the United States. Yoko Ono sold her rights to the catalogue to ATV, now known as Sony/ATV, in 2009.

“Only the McCartney half of the Lennon/McCartney songs are eligible for termination, and only for the U.S.,” an unnamed source told Billboard. “Sony/ATV still owns [those] Beatles songs in the rest of the world.”

Meanwhile it was just reported earlier this month that the Jackson estate sold its share of Sony/ATV to Sony for $750 million. The catalogue now includes works by Jackson, Bob Dylan, Eminem and Taylor Swift.

As the world found out in 2012 when “Mad Men” paid $250,000 to use “Tomorrow Never Knows” at the end of one episode, Beatles songs are not “exploited” cheaply.

“It was always my feeling that the show lacked a certain authenticity because we never could have an actual master recording of the Beatles performing,” Matthew Weiner, the creator of the show, said at the time. “Not just someone singing their song or a version of their song, but them, doing a song in the show. It always felt to me like a flaw. Because they are the band, probably, of the 20th century.” He added: “Whatever people think, this is not about money. It never is. They are concerned about their legacy and their artistic impact.”

Bob Dylan just sold his entire catalog of songs to Universal Music

Taylor Telford

The deal covers more than 600 songs spanning six decades, from “Blowin’ In The Wind” to “Murder Most Foul.”

The terms of the deal were not made public, but Variety reported that it was worth “at least nine figures.”

“To represent the body of work of one of the greatest songwriters of all time — whose cultural importance can’t be overstated — is both a privilege and a responsibility,” UMPG’s chief executive Jody Gerson said in a news release Monday. “We look forward to working with Bob and the team in ensuring his artistry continues to reach and inspire generations of fans, recording artists and songwriters around the world.”

2020 has been a devastating year for the music industry. Goldman Sachspredicted that global music business revenues would fall 25 percent this year and live music revenues would plunge 75 percent as the pandemic has silenced live music and taken touring off the table. But Goldman foresees a major rebound, predicting that global music revenue will nearly double in the next decade, ballooning to $142 billion by 2023.

Music copyrights have become big business, especially as streaming continues to dominate music and new platforms create licensing opportunities. Many musicians have taken to selling the rights to their work: in November, DJ Calvin Harris, rock band the Killers and Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks struck deals with private equity firms for their catalogs. In recent months, TikTok signed major licensing deals with the National Music Publishing Association and Sony Music to ensure popular music would still be allowed on its platform.

Universal, one of the biggest players in the global music industry, has weathered the storm well thanks to its streaming business. Despite the pandemic and second-quarter hit, Universal generated more than $1 billion in streaming revenues in the first nine months of 2020, Vivendi, its French parent company, announced in its third-quarter earnings report.

After Chinese conglomerate Tencent took a 10 percent stake in Universal last year, the company’s value grew to more than $35 billion. Vivendi is planning to take Universal public in 2022. Warner Music Group, one of Universal’s biggest competitors, went public in July and is worth more than $15 billion.

The son of a Minnesota appliance-store owner, Dylan got his start as a folk singer and soon became one of the voices of political protest and cultural reshaping in the 1960s. His songs — driven by his distinctive nasal-twang vocals — are often seen as dense prose poems packed with flamboyant, surreal images. His oeuvre earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, making him the only songwriter to ever win the award.

“It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the fundamental key to all great music, nor is it a secret that Bob is one of the very greatest practitioners of that art,” Sir Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group, said in a news release. “Brilliant and moving, inspiring and beautiful, insightful and provocative, [Dylan’s] songs are timeless — whether they were written more than half a century ago or yesterday.”

Rolling Stone magazine once called Dylan “the most influential American musician rock-and-roll has ever produced.” His songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times by artists spanning many continents and genres. He has sold more than 125 million records throughout his career, according to a news release — not that money has ever been Dylan’s metric for success.

“What’s money?” Dylan famously said. “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”