Ok I just looked, she gave up rights to her first 6 albums and they were eventually sold. She’d pay royalties to the new owners like when Michael Jackson bought the Beatles masters.
But according to the article she waited until the “sunset clause” kicked in and could record them again royalty free and hopes to cut into the profits of the owners of the original masters which she does not own.
I don't think it mattered whether she recorded the same songs as a previous album, or wrote an entirely new one and recorded that. After her deal is up, she is able to record whatever she wants and sell it. In this case, it made sense for her to record some old material in order to make more money selling it herself. Plenty of bands record songs that they have recorded before and put them on new albums. I guess it was somewhat unusual for her to release albums with identical content.
What McCartney did or is doing is different. He is reclaiming songwriting copyrights under a section of copyright law that apparently only applies to music. Since he assigned copyright for the songs in the past, he would actually have to pay royalties to the owner if he recorded his own stuff -- that is in addition to the 50% he has to pay to apparently Yoko Ono since he never owned 100% of those songs in the first place.
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