Posted by Eric Harvey on 01/22/2013 at 6:45 PM Exclusive, News

The Popdust Files: 50 cent, andrew lloyd webber, beyonce, bono, diddy, dolly parton, dr. dre, elton, garth brooks, gene autry, Gene Simmons, jay-z, jimmy buffet, lists, mariah carey, michael jackson, mick jagger, money, paul mccartney, ringo starr, Sting, the police, U2

11. Garth Brooks: $325 million
The doofy Oklahoman ex-bouncer and hands-free mic connoisseur who presided over the wedding of country and pop-rock in the early 1990s (with the 31-times platinum No Fences and Ropin’ the Wind) is also the biggest selling albums artist in the Soundscan era. After retiring for most of the 2000s (the only real option after the Chris Gaines debacle), he’s been delighting Las Vegas tourists for the past few years with a stripped-down, acoustic version of what made him famous.

 

 

 

 

12. Gene Autry: $320 million
Known to millions of great-grandparents as the Singing Cowboy, Autry hung around the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans for decades. He certainly paid his dues: he was there at the birth of American popular music, signing his first deal with Columbia in 1929; the early heyday of radio, via the wildly popular 16-year run of “Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch”; and with “The Gene Autry Show” at the dawn of television. You’ve likely heard his versions of the holiday standards “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and sung “Here Comes Santa Claus,” which he wrote. You’ve also likely heard of the major league baseball team the Los Angeles Angels, which he owned until selling the team to Disney right before his death.

 

13. Mick Jagger: $305 million
An economics student when the Rolling Stones formed, the soon-to-be-70 Jagger has spent 50 years fronting rock’s most enduring and lucrative brand. Sure, the band will release an album here and there, but since the 1970s they’ve carried the banner for the enduring power of arena rock. They’ve got three of the top 10 grossing tours of all time—accounting for more than a billion dollars—and  they’ve already sold 364,864 tickets for a forthcoming five-date tour in London and New York.

 

 

 

 

14. Gene Simmons: $300 million
Simmons’ ridiculously popular reality series Family Jewels may have gotten axed, but the crotchety rocker is still raking in revenues from exceedingly lucrative tours (2008-09’s “Kiss Alive/35 World Tour” raked in over $30 million alone), and enough branded merchandise (condoms, a coffin, a credit card, among the stranger things) to satiate generations of KISS Army veterans. When you have to hire Live Nation to manage your merchandising and licensing, you know you have a lot of things with your name attached to them.

 

 

 

 

15. Beyonce: $300 million
The 2013 Super Bowl halftime performer has racked up a fortune (independently of her husband) leading the 16-times platinum Destiny’s Child, selling 75 million solo albums; staging lavish tours that regularly gross between $80 and $100 million; and striking endorsement deals with Vizio, L’Oreal, and most recently, a $50 million affiliation with Pepsi that didn’t go over as well as she’d hoped.

 

 

 

 

 

16. Elton John: $300 million
Like Sting (#18), the man born Reginald Dwight has had his own problems with sketchy accountants—Elton’s losses were estimated at a staggering £20 million, however. Not quite couch change, but also not nearly enough to break the bank for the most successful male solo artist of all time; a guy whose ‘70s albums alone have sold upwards of 22 million copies to date, and whose rebooted version of “Candle in the Wind” has itself sold 33 million copies. When you’re known to drop £9.6m on property and £293,000 on flowers (flowers!) in less than two years, it helps to have a pile of money as large as your personality.

 

 

17. Ringo Starr: $300 million
Sure, Ringo benefited from his association with three of the most beloved singer-songwriters in history, but he also quietly reinvented the boundaries of rock drumming in the 1960s (just listen to “Strawberry Fields Forever” or “I Want You [She’s So Heavy]” again), and his unique way with nonsensical verbal phrasing resulted in the titles for “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Okay, fine: the residuals from a very egalitarian Fab Four publishing contract have been very kind to Mr. Starr.

 

 

 

18. Sting: $290 million
The five platinum albums he oversaw as the leader of the Police were followed by a yuppie-beloved solo career netting the ex-schoolteacher sales of 14 million more. Then there’s the Jaguar S-Type’s lucrative reappropriation of “Desert Rose,” and the 2007-08 reunion gigs with his old mates, which constituted the seventh-highest grossing tour of all time, pulling in $377 million. The man born Gordon Sumner was so rich in the late 1980s that his accountant stole £6 million from him, and it took him four years to notice.

 

 

 

19. Dr. Dre: $250 million
Sure, the 13-years-in-the-making Detox is the Chinese Democracy of rap, but give Andre Young a break—he has been busy. In part by spending the money earned from selling 10 million copies of The Chronic and Aftermath, but primarily with Beats by Dre, the omnipresent, expensive, and exceedingly bass-friendly commodity that turned branded headphones into something that rappers could ask their business managers about (see also: #20, #8). HTC bought a $300 million stake in the company last year, when it also was announced that Dre and his Beats partner Jimmy Iovine were involved in a mysterious start-up with industrial metal pioneer Trent Reznor.

 

 

20. 50 Cent: $250 million
The G-Unit capo got Eminem’s attention with a 2002 mixtape, and sold 872,000 first-week copies of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ the next year (it’s now eight-times platinum). Fiddy’s sales may have declined over the last decade, but he’s still got three platinum records, and one gold. And he knows how to hedge his bets: There’s the $100 million dollar Vitamin Water payout, the video game, the headphone line, the Ecko-affiliated clothing line that brought in $60 million in 2006 alone. When you’re this rich, the idea of working with a billionaire South African mining executive to develop your own branded line of platinum isn’t that crazy. Okay, it’s a little crazy.

 

 

 

 

Photo Credits (from top): Eamonn McCormack/WireImage, Paul McCartney/Twitter, Jacopo Raule/Getty Images, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Diddy/Instagram, Paul Natkin/WireImage, Clive Brunskill/Getty Images, Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, Leslie T. Snadowsky/Splash News, Vince Bucci/Getty Images, Peter Kramer/Getty Images, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Janet Mayer/Splash News, Frazer Harrison/Getty Images, Beyonce/Tumblr, Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images, Jim Dyson/Getty Images, FameFlynet, Splash News, Splash News