I need a better understanding about the Beatles and Paul Mccartney?

He bought the rights to the songs. Meaning when someone uses the lyrics, they have to get permission from him. This is a little known fact but Paul McCartney still gets royalties from them. Everytime a song is played (like in the Target commercials) he gets 30% of the income.

The whole Micheal Jackson Paul McCartney suit has been settled (according to McCartney in the new Rolling Stone) but the music isn't on itunes yet because of fine tunings and such between apple records and mac.

Hope this helps, it's all really confusing.

The authorship of the music and the ownership of the copyrights are two different things. Nothing can change the fact that the Beatles wrote this material. Michael Jackson was simply being selfish and bought the rights of the songs for his own gain. Paul McCartney has to consult Michael's people in order to re record these songs or anything else. It was a terrible mistake on Paul's part because he has far more $$ than Michael Jackson. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time and missed out on buying the copyrights, otherwise he'd own all of it.

Paul gave a TV interview a couple of year back and explained it this way. He was doing a video with MJ and they both were having a fun time. Paul said to Jacko that the best way to invest in music was to buy music rights and they would sort of behave like an investment portfolio. A short while later the Beatles catalog came up for purchase due to the fact that the Beatles did not own their music as such and their company and managers had sold the stuff and Paul said he thought he would be able to get the rights back where they belonged. Unfortunately MJ had taken Paul investment advice and outbid Paul and managed to get a lump of the Beatles rights much to Paul's anger. Paul said he spoke to MJ and that MJ squeaked a reply "Paul it only business", needless to say the relationship between the two ceased as of that moment. Paul has since said he is no longer chasing the rights as they will soon return to the owner after a short period of time (i.e, about 5 year now).

Paul own a lot of music rights but I think they are song belonging to dead artists (Peggy Sue, Rave On and others by Buddy Holly and loads others).

Hope this helps.

Apple Records owned the song, and sold all rights to Jackson. he outbid McCartney.

michael jackson owns all of them, which means if anyone wants to use one of their songs in a commercial, they have to ask him for permission! he bought them back in the day when he was like, the most famous person on earth and could get anything he wanted. I think if Paul is so damn worried about it he needs to buy them back. He has enough money dont you think?!?!

I am not sure, but since Jacko is supposedly broke and the songs are still not available for re-release I would say there is some sort of a legal tie up somewhere.....all I know is you can't get any of them......if you don't have the "albums".....you know black plastic disks that you used to need a needle to play.....??? lol......unless you have the album you can't get them.

Jacko has since sold most of his share to SONY.