How much money did The Beatles make on their albums?

How much money did The Beatles make on their albums?

There are a lot of very basic facts of life when it comes to talking about music – The Beatles being worth a lot of money is one of them. This is to the point that it almost over-simplifies the scale of the mania that surrounded them, because no matter how much it has been said before, it will always bear repeating just how manic and unprecedented their fame was, redefining not only the fabric of the 1960s, but the entire scope of rock music forevermore.

Without wanting to compare the Fab Four to a quartet of Cinderellas, it really was a rags-to-riches story for the Liverpool natives, who could never have so much as fathomed the fame that would later be thrust upon them as they grew up in the estates of Merseyside. But when the paycheques did start rolling in, you can bet they didn’t quite know where to turn, let alone the mammoth fortunes they would go on to behold well over half a century later.

It’s also worth remembering that, although it’s relatively modern history in some respects, from a financial and economic perspective, the 1960s were a very long time ago. The figures are already staggering, but consider the inflation of money in the 60 years that have passed since, and The Beatles’ overall fortunes are worth more than a healthy sum, taking into account just album and record sales alone, and notwithstanding all the other capitalised avenues that they built around their wake.

With this in mind, even to say that the Fab Four made $1.76 billion in album sales may be a conservative figure. Given that between the years of their tenure from 1962 to 1970 alone, they made $17 million of that sum, the translation into today’s money is astronomical, especially when the culture of the days of old is taken into account, where artists were not remunerated anywhere near as healthily as they should have been. Yes, The Beatles are rich – it goes without saying – but the true scale of their wealth is beyond the limits of comprehension to most.

How much is each member of The Beatles worth?

The maths behind how exactly The Beatles split their earnings is pretty complicated, but in the most basic terms possible, they distributed it based on how much work each person did. For obvious reasons, that meant Paul McCartney and John Lennon got the biggest share, and while they would hardly be considered out of pocket, Ringo Starr and George Harrison got a far less sizeable chunk of the cash.

Although internet claims of celebrity net worth are not always the most reliable, they do give a plausible ballpark estimation of the wealth of each Beatle, as well as how this stands up to today. Coming in first place, as no surprise to anyone, is McCartney, who these days has an eye-watering wealth of roughly $1.2bn, taking his earnings from Wings and various other solo projects into that figure also. Lennon followed behind with a net worth of $800m at the time of his death in 1980, while Harrison’s was around $400m when he passed away in 2001, and Starr has a net worth in the region of $350m in current terms.

Given that relatively, The Beatles were only together at the height of their fame for seven years, it’s a mammoth steam train of money that they stoked up in such a finite period of time. Granted, the music business had much less commercial leeway then than it does now, and in many ways, there was no such thing as ‘middle of the road’ fame. But that said, whenever you hear people talking about the Fab Four as the biggest band in the world and you roll your eyes, maybe this is the moment you realise, once and for all, that it really is the truth.