Beyoncé Tops Forbes' Highest-Paid Women in Music List
Shortly after Adele took home the Grammy award for Album of the Year in February, she broke it in half--with the intention of physically sharing it with Beyoncé, the internet concluded—in recognition of the latter's Lemonade. But Queen Bey won an even more valuable distinction outright: she's this year's highest-paid woman in music, pulling in a whopping $105 million pretax.
Lemonade was a hit with both critics and fans, giving Beyoncé her sixth solo No. 1. The ensuing Formation World Tour, much of it falling into our list's scoring period, grossed a quarter of a billion dollars. Then she took time off as she and husband Jay-Z welcomed twins Rumi and Sir this summer. Adele finished second, earning $69 million, boosted by seven-figure nightly grosses on her first proper tour since 2011.
In order to form our list, we looked at pretax income from June 1, 2016 through June 1, 2017, and did not take out fees charged by agents, managers and lawyers. We gathered data from Nielsen SoundScan, Pollstar, the RIAA and interviews with industry insiders. The two mononymous stars both earned tens of millions more than the rest of the pack, but there are plenty of notable names further down the list.
Lemonade was a hit with both critics and fans, giving Beyoncé her sixth solo No. 1. The ensuing Formation World Tour, much of it falling into our list's scoring period, grossed a quarter of a billion dollars. Then she took time off as she and husband Jay-Z welcomed twins Rumi and Sir this summer. Adele finished second, earning $69 million, boosted by seven-figure nightly grosses on her first proper tour since 2011.
In order to form our list, we looked at pretax income from June 1, 2016 through June 1, 2017, and did not take out fees charged by agents, managers and lawyers. We gathered data from Nielsen SoundScan, Pollstar, the RIAA and interviews with industry insiders. The two mononymous stars both earned tens of millions more than the rest of the pack, but there are plenty of notable names further down the list.
