Highest Paid Musicians in the World 2024

The eight highest-earning musicians of 2024, by annual earnings in millions of US dollars as reported by Forbes. Taylor Swift leads on $1,100m — ten times the figure for Jay-Z in second place on $110m.

This is one of the most lopsided rankings on the site. The eight artists earned $1,762m between them, and Swift alone accounts for 62.4 percent of that. Her earnings exceed the other seven combined ($662m) by a margin of $438m. Below her the field is remarkably even: Jay-Z ($110m), Drake ($100m), Coldplay ($98m), Ed Sheeran ($94m), Beyoncé ($92m), Bad Bunny ($88m) and The Weeknd ($80m) are separated by just $30m from top to bottom.

A figure of this size in a single year almost always comes from touring rather than recorded music, and the Eras Tour, which ran through 2024, is the highest-grossing concert tour on record. Streaming pays a small fraction of a cent per play; a stadium tour sells hundreds of thousands of tickets at over a hundred dollars each, plus merchandise, and a single tour can therefore dwarf a decade of catalogue income.

Two things to keep in mind when reading any earnings list of this kind. These are pre-tax gross earnings, not take-home pay, and they are estimates: Forbes builds them from touring data, chart performance and interviews rather than from filed accounts, because most artists are not required to publish their income. Second, the ranking swings violently year to year — an artist on tour appears near the top, and the same artist in a studio year may not appear at all.