Paul McCartney was behind one of the biggest copyright heists of all time.

He (his clever actors in his name & revenue) covertly bought rafts of songs endlessly, until he got to 50% of the UK copyrighted songlist. At that point he claimed all unclaimed royalties. Folk songs, singer songwriter songs, unclassified songs, undocumented airings etc.

The PRS had a metric, BBC et al documented everything broadcast and PRS calculated it from there. They changed their metrics at some stage, probably as a reaction to adverse publicity among the cognoscenti over the scam. A few big bands then decided to collect their own royalties, citing the 18 month delay from PRS.

I well remember a radio prog lamenting some budding songwriter who was complaining they had sold their song and it never saw the light of day thereafter. And a bit of a dig into the situation. Then I heard about PMcC's antics.

And (assuming we cared about his music) do we believe (eg) Robbie Williams writes all his own stuff? It's a jungle out there.