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Originally Posted by God of Thunder
Not that I need to point anything out to you warrrreagl, but Jacko does not own the publishing right to ALL Beatles recordings, just the Northern Songs LTD portion. The Beatles as a whole still own the Apple portion.
I'm not sure where the split is, you can provide that info I'm sure. I think they started Apple right before Sgt. Pepper.
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Hey, I need plenty of stuff pointed out to me about this topic, because I'm way behind.
And this is where it gets fuzzy. Apple is not a publishing company, but is a recording label. Songs that were recorded and released on Apple Records were still published under either Northern Songs, MACLEN Music, or sometimes both.
The Beatles originally recorded with EMI/Capitol Records and published/copyrighted under Dick James or MACLEN Music (a combination of McCartney-Lennon). Then, when the EMI/Capitol contract expired in 1967, they formed their own label, Apple Records. At about this same time, they turned over rights (and I'm still not sure if this is copyrights or publishing rights, which are not always the same thing) to Northern Songs.
The first Beatles song recorded and released on the Apple label was the single "Hey Jude" in 1968.
Usually, the only time you'll see a publishing or copyrighting company name on an album is if the lyrics are printed. Abbey Road, for example, makes no mention of MACLEN or Northern Songs. To make things more confusing, the master recordings are owned by several separate entities (including George Martin), and the Beatles were originally managed by their manager Brian Epstein's company, NEMS Enterprises, which wound up getting sued by the Beatles for mismanagement of funds.
For all of these reasons, when somebody asks me who owns the Beatles songs, I usually shrug and say, "I don't know," and I think to myself, "It all depends on what you mean by 'songs.' Do you mean copyrights, publishing rights, recording rights, performance rights, or licensing rights?"
The last three years of the Beatles existence just goes to show what happens when peace, love, and understanding starts bouncing checks.