July 26, 2018: Twenty-nine (29) of the 50 top-earning music acts have been around for at least 20 years or recorded at least 10 albums.[1] Billboard Magazine calls these “heritage acts.”
Overall, the top revenue generator was U-2, boosted by the 30th anniversary tour of the album, "The Joshua Tree." That tour alone generated $52 million in take-home pay for the band.[2] Without that tour, U-2 didn’t make the top-50 list in 2016.
Country star Garth Brooks was number two on the 2017 list, netting $47 million.
He was number 18 the year before.
Only two acts made the top 50 without touring. Drake made the list with $8.6 million in streaming royalties. Taylor Swift sold more albums than anybody else to net $5 million.
The New York Post reported that "rock continued to dominate, taking 24 of the Top 50 spots versus nine for pop, nine for country and eight for R&B/hip-hop."
See the complete list here.
Footnotes:
- New York Post, "America’s top-earning musicians are mostly ‘heritage artists,’" July 20, 2018
- Billboard, "Billboard's 2018 Money Makers: 50 Highest-Paid Musicians," July 20, 2018
Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," "In Search of Self-Governance," and "The People’s Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt." Read more reports from Scott Rasmussen — Click Here Now.
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