Dr. Dre has been named the top earning musical artiste of the decade by Forbes. The mogul earned the honour with a staggering $950 milion USD in the last 10 year.
Despite only releasing one album (Compton) back in 2015, the legendary producer, rapper, entrepreneur, and audio engineer’s earning have come from his 20 percent stake in Beats, which was acquired by Apple in 2014 for $3 billion USD.
Coming in second place is Taylor Swift with $825 million USD earnings and Beyoncé trailing behind with $685 million USD amounted this decade.
According to Forbes, the earnings were measure by “looking at touring data from Pollstar, music consumption numbers from Nielsen and interviews with managers, agents and many of the stars themselves,” not accounting living expenses and taxes. Rounding out the top five are: U2 with $675 million and Sean “Diddy Combs with an estimated $605 million.
It is also interesting to note that if postmortem earnings were included in the list, Michael Jackson would take the number one spot with an estimated $2.37 billion USD including $750 million made by his estate’s sale of half his Sony/ATV publishing catalog in 2016.
Take a look at Forbes list of the top-earning musicians of the decade below.
1. Dr. Dre ($950 million USD)
2. Taylor Swift ($825 million USD)
3. Beyoncé ($685 million USD)
4. U2 ($675 million USD)
5. Diddy ($605 million USD)
6. Elton John ($565 million USD)
7. Jay-Z ($560 million USD)
8. Paul McCartney ($535 million USD)
9. Katy Perry ($530 million USD)
10. Lady Gaga ($500 million USD)