Taylor Swift at Top of Top 40 Highest Earning Artists

Recently, Billboard released their list of top 40 artists and no we didn’t forget about it! We’re here to discuss who finished where and how they got there. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that at number one we see Taylor Swift and her $73.5 million in 2015 revenue. She made over $61 million touring and her $7.2 million in sales was so high that it would rank in the low 30s of this very list.

One Direction is on hiatus, but before they did that they made $24.2 million in 2015. Their highest source of revenue came from touring ($19.6 million). In ninth was Adele and her $20.5 million. Even though she made zero from touring, she impressively finished in the top 10.

Maroon 5 flies under the radar at times, but their fans were faithful in 2015. They made $13 million from touring and $2.7 million from sales! In total, they brought in $19.2 million.

Other pop/hip-hop artists that finished on the list includes Madonna ($12.7 million), Ed Sheeran ($11.6 million), Britney Spears ($10.6 million), J. Cole ($8.8 million), The Weeknd ($8.6 million), Ariana Grande ($8.3 million), 5 Seconds of Summer ($8.3 million), Sam Smith ($7.5 million), Drake ($7.4 million), and Nicki Minaj ($6.3 million).

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