Dynamite James
The Main attraction
From Taylor Swift To Dr. Dre: The 10 Top-Earning Musicians Of The Decade
Zack O'Malley GreenburgForbes Staff
Hollywood & Entertainment
Senior Editor, Media & Entertainment
Dr. Dre hasn’t released an album since 2015 and hasn’t gone on tour since the turn of the millennium. His last production credit on a No. 1 hit was in 2009, when he worked the boards on Eminem’s “Crack a Bottle.” But the hip-hop superproducer still topped all other music stars in earnings this decade, pulling in an estimated $950 million thanks mostly to his roughly 20% stake in Beats, the bass-heavy headphone maker Apple bought for $3 billion in 2014.
Other stars had more traditional ways of making money. Taylor Swift was the decade’s second-biggest earner with $825 million followed by Beyoncé with $685 million, both profiting from multiple centimillion-dollar tours, several multiplatinum albums and a slew of multimillion-dollar sponsor partnerships with brands from Adidas to AT&T.
Forbes measures the industry’s top-earning musicians annually for the Celebrity 100 by looking at touring data from Pollstar, music consumption numbers from Nielsen and interviews with managers, agents and many of the stars themselves. The list doesn’t include behind-the-scenes earners such as agents, managers and promoters, nor does it deduct living expenses or taxes.
Our ranking doesn’t extend beyond the grave; if postmortem earnings were counted, Michael Jackson would be No. 1. His staggering $2.37 billion total for the decade by our count is higher than his estate’s recently filed estimate of $1.7 billion because we counted reinvested royalties from his half of the Sony/ATV publishing catalog (his estate sold the asset for $750 million in 2016). He easily tops his living peers by either measure.
The list features a diverse group—there are only three white male acts in the top ten. Hip-hop has produced three of the moguls who’ve done the best job growing their considerable wealth, including Dre, Diddy (No. 5, $605 million) the genre’s first billionaire, Jay-Z (No. 7, $560 million). The latter two are worth more than their decade-long earnings totals thanks to investing wisely and starting their own companies.
“Great melodies have a lot in common with great ideas,” explained Bono, frontman of U2 (No. 4, $675 million), to Forbes in 2017. “They’re instantly memorable. There’s a certain inevitability. There’s a sort of beautiful arc. Whether it’s a song or business or a solution to a problem facing the world’s poor, I see what I do as the same thing.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackom...e-10-top-earning-musicians-of-the-decade/amp/
#Kingshyt
Zack O'Malley GreenburgForbes Staff
Hollywood & Entertainment
Senior Editor, Media & Entertainment
Dr. Dre hasn’t released an album since 2015 and hasn’t gone on tour since the turn of the millennium. His last production credit on a No. 1 hit was in 2009, when he worked the boards on Eminem’s “Crack a Bottle.” But the hip-hop superproducer still topped all other music stars in earnings this decade, pulling in an estimated $950 million thanks mostly to his roughly 20% stake in Beats, the bass-heavy headphone maker Apple bought for $3 billion in 2014.
Other stars had more traditional ways of making money. Taylor Swift was the decade’s second-biggest earner with $825 million followed by Beyoncé with $685 million, both profiting from multiple centimillion-dollar tours, several multiplatinum albums and a slew of multimillion-dollar sponsor partnerships with brands from Adidas to AT&T.
Forbes measures the industry’s top-earning musicians annually for the Celebrity 100 by looking at touring data from Pollstar, music consumption numbers from Nielsen and interviews with managers, agents and many of the stars themselves. The list doesn’t include behind-the-scenes earners such as agents, managers and promoters, nor does it deduct living expenses or taxes.
Our ranking doesn’t extend beyond the grave; if postmortem earnings were counted, Michael Jackson would be No. 1. His staggering $2.37 billion total for the decade by our count is higher than his estate’s recently filed estimate of $1.7 billion because we counted reinvested royalties from his half of the Sony/ATV publishing catalog (his estate sold the asset for $750 million in 2016). He easily tops his living peers by either measure.
The list features a diverse group—there are only three white male acts in the top ten. Hip-hop has produced three of the moguls who’ve done the best job growing their considerable wealth, including Dre, Diddy (No. 5, $605 million) the genre’s first billionaire, Jay-Z (No. 7, $560 million). The latter two are worth more than their decade-long earnings totals thanks to investing wisely and starting their own companies.
“Great melodies have a lot in common with great ideas,” explained Bono, frontman of U2 (No. 4, $675 million), to Forbes in 2017. “They’re instantly memorable. There’s a certain inevitability. There’s a sort of beautiful arc. Whether it’s a song or business or a solution to a problem facing the world’s poor, I see what I do as the same thing.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackom...e-10-top-earning-musicians-of-the-decade/amp/
#Kingshyt
