Song catalogue

In 1963 Lennon and McCartney agreed to assign their song publishing rights to Northern Songs, a company created by music publisher Dick James.^[116] The company was administered by James' own company Dick James Music. Northern Songs went public in 1965, with Lennon and McCartney each holding 15% of the company's shares Dick James and the company's chairman, Charles Silver, held a controlling 37.5%. In 1969, following a failed attempt by Lennon and McCartney to buy the company, James and Silver sold Northern Songs to British TV company Associated TeleVision (ATV), from which Lennon and McCartney received stock.

In 1985, after a short period in which the parent company was owned by Australian business magnate Robert Holmes à Court, ATV Music was sold to Michael Jackson for a reported $47 million^[117] (trumping a joint bid by McCartney and Yoko Ono), including the publishing rights to over 200 songs composed by Lennon and McCartney.

A decade later Jackson and Sony merged its music publishing businesses.^[117] Since 1995, Jackson and Sony/ATV Music Publishing have jointly owned most of the Lennon-McCartney songs recorded by The Beatles. Meanwhile, Lennon's estate and McCartney still receive their respective songwriter shares of the royalties. (Despite his ownership of most of the Lennon-McCartney publishing, Jackson has only recorded one Lennon-McCartney composition himself, "Come Together" which was featured in his film Moonwalker and HIStory album)

Although the Jackson-Sony catalogue includes most of The Beatles' greatest hits, four of their earliest songs had been published by one of EMI's publishing companies prior to Lennon and McCartney signing with Dick James — and McCartney later succeeded in personally acquiring the publishing rights to "Love Me Do", "Please Please Me", "P.S. I Love You" and "Ask Me Why" from EMI.

Harrison and Starr did not renew their songwriting contracts with Northern Songs in 1968, signing with Apple Publishing instead. Harrison later created Harrisongs, which still owns the rights to his post-1967 songs such as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Something". Starr also created his own company, called Startling Music. It holds the rights to his two post-1967 songs recorded by The Beatles, "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden".

The Beatles are one of the few major artists who have not released their recorded catalogue through online music services (for example, iTunes and Napster). Apple Corp's dispute with Apple, Inc. (the owners of iTunes) over the use of the name "Apple" has played a particular part in this. An uneasy truce between the two companies broke when Apple Computers opened the iTunes Store, after which Apple Corp sued Apple, Inc. This was resolved in February 2007, with Apple Computer owning the Apple name but licensing it back to Apple Records. Following the resolution, several solo albums by Lennon and McCartney were released to the iTunes Music Store. As of November 2007, all of the band members' solo catalogues have been released on iTunes.

Studio albums

• Please Please Me (Parlophone, 1963)
• With the Beatles (Parlophone, 1963)
• A Hard Day's Night (Parlophone, 1964)
• Beatles for Sale (Parlophone, 1964)
• Help! (Parlophone, 1965)
• Rubber Soul (Parlophone, 1965)
• Revolver (Parlophone, 1966)
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Parlophone, 1967)
• Magical Mystery Tour (U.S. only. Released as a Double EP in the UK) (Capitol, 1967)
• The Beatles ("The White Album") (Apple, 1968)
• Yellow Submarine (Apple, 1969)
• Abbey Road (Apple, 1969)
• Let It Be (Apple, 1970)

CD releases

In 1987, EMI released all of The Beatles' studio albums on CD worldwide. Apple Corps decided to standardize The Beatles catalogue throughout the world. They chose to release the twelve original studio albums as released in the United Kingdom, as well as the Magical Mystery Tour U.S. album, which had been released as a shorter Double EP in the UK. All of the remaining Beatles material from the singles and EPs from 1962–1970 which had not been issued on the original British studio albums were gathered on the Past Masters double album compilation:

• Past Masters, Volume One (1988)
• Past Masters, Volume Two (1988)

The U.S. album configurations from 1964-65 were released as box sets in 2004 and 2006 (The Capitol Albums Volume 1 and Volume 2 respectively); these included both stereo and mono versions based on the mixes that were prepared for vinyl at the time of their original 1960s releases in the United States.