I know its lame, but I'm really curious and for the life of me cant get a good google search to go threw. Just overall earnings or how much each one got individually.

I have no idea, but if you can't find a real answer, I can make one up for you. I'll say $26 billion. Give or take a couple trillion.

I don't know about the Beatles as a whole, but Paul McCartney is hands down one of the richest musicians out there.

McArtney reached billionare status in the 80's for a while, but didn't maintain it for long.

He was dubbed the "richest man in show biz". That's not bad for a musician.

When they released the anthology in 95', it turned out to be their highest earning year ever. That's also good for a band that boke up 25 years earlier.

I can sum it al up in just three words....

OODLES and OODLES!!!!:p

One HUNDRED BILLION dollars!

http://www.k-inet.com/~brown/newsarc/99May/evil.jpg

I remember hearing an interview in the late '70s where John Lennon claimed he had nowhere near as much money as either Elvis or Frank Sinatra...though how much of that was what Yoko Ono pissed away with her weird schemes I have no idea.

And McCartney couldn't afford to buy back the Beatles catalog when it came up for sale in the '80s. I think he even went to Yoko to see if she'd kick in cash. But Michael Jackson still wound up with it.

Certainly the Beatles generated a lot of cash. How much they kept is an open question. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if a Jimmy Page or Robert Plant was actually wealthier.

According to this McCartney has over 700 million US:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3630545.stm

Sir Paul McCartney has lost his place as the richest man in UK music to a former record label boss.

The former Beatle has topped the Sunday Times' Rich List of music personalities for the past six years.

But while Sir Paul is still estimated to be worth £760m, the paper said his wealth has been overtaken by former Zomba Records boss Clive Calder.

Mr Calder is said to have made £1.2bn selling Zomba - home to Britney Spears and 'N Sync - to BMG in 2002.

Sir Paul receives most of his income from his investments & royalties from post-Beatles releases, simply because the Fab Four got a compensation package from Capitol/EMI so brain-melting in its un-lucrativeness, it virtually defies imagination today. In that pre-history of modern pop music biz finances, all four Beatles and Brian Epstein split 10% of revenues derived from sales of their albums and singles, while the label walked home with 90%.

The band also got no merchandising or royalties, key components of the contemporary artist's income structure. Not one of those Beatle wigs or guitars enriched John, Paul, George or Ringo by even one thin dime. Although their later recordings released on their own Apple label offered far more of a cut to them, a laocoon tangle of lawsuits and countersuits have kept most of those funds from ever reaching any of the principals.

Even so, it's said that their share of the proceeds generated so many tax pounds for the Crown, they single-handedly paved the British highway system.

I think it's fair to gather that if the Beatles had gotten just the deal the AVERAGE new artist receives from a major label - let alone, say, Oasis or REM - Paul would rival Bill Gates as the world's richest man.

Thats what I seem to have found. Bassicaly Brian wasnt the wisest manager, even if he wasnt a terrible guy. John Lennon bassicaly ended up saying that he sucked ass, once he became aware of how badly they got screwed.

Seriously, they got screwed out of amazing amounts by their first contracts (besides the obvious amazingly huge mistake of giving away rights to their songs), and at that time people earning as much as them were being taxed to outrageous degrees by the british government.

Id say if they'd gotten all that they could have with contracts, kept the rights to there songs and the cash from their marketing, along with some steady and good investments: I bet the beatles couldv earned 1/2 the world.

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