By Lisette Voytko
There has never been a better time to … sell out – especially if she is a superstar who holds the copyright to decades of success. Nearly half of the top 25 winners, including Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and rock star Bruce Springsteen, secured their places on the list by releasing all or part of their music charts.
In December, Bruce Springsteen sold his masters and copyrights for all of his recorded music and songwriting – including 11 multi-platinum albums and five gold singles – for an estimated $ 500 million. The buyer was Sony Music, the parent company of its longtime record label, Columbia Records. The blockbuster deal brings the 20-time Grammy Award winner to No. 2 on Forbes’s list of the highest paid entertainers of 2021, behind Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, who raised $ 600 million in cash after its effect for $ 1.6 billion in November. This deal made Jackson a billionaire.
Boss is not the only rock star to make this move. Other classics that sold their lucrative music charts last year include Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Neil Young, who raised a total of $ 500 million before taxes, enough to earn a place in this year’s rankings. “These deals were not a hand-to-hand battle,” said Jon Landau, director of Springsteen for nearly half a century. “Everyone gets what suits them.”
Music libraries are not the only pieces of content that sell for much more than one song. Over the past two years, major services have spent about $ 3.7 billion securing rights to television hits such as Friends and Law & Order, helping the creators of both series make it into this year’s list. A world obsessed with large volumes of content has secured South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker a place on this year’s list and a $ 900 million deal with Viacom, which wanted 25 years of success on its account. The woman with the biggest profits in the field of entertainment last year, at No. 12, Reese Witherspoon, fell a few positions after she sold a part of the production company Hello Sunshine to the private equity company Blackstone at a value of 900 million dollars in August.
Jay-Z, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kanye West topped the top five with their own 9-figure figures, most of which they earned not from rap, production or acting, but from selling champagne. Even the relatively fresh Taylor Swift, at $ 25 million to $ 52 million, made the most money from re-recording albums released for the first time a decade ago.
In total, the 25 highest paid entertainers earned a total of $ 4.4 billion before taxes and fees in 2021, the vast majority of whom did so without creating anything new. (That’s double the $ 2.2 billion earned by the top 25 celebrities in 2020.) “There are so many choices these days. People are attracted to what they know.”
The list:
1. Peter Jackson – $ 580 million
2. Bruce Springsteen – $ 435 million
3. Jay-Z – $ 340 million
4. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – $ 270 million
5. Kanye West – $ 235 million
6. Trey Parker and Matt Stone – $ 210 million
7. Paul Simon – $ 200 million
8. Tyler Perry – $ 165 million
9. Ryan Tedder – $ 160 million
10. Bob Dylan – $ 130 million
11. Red Hot Chili Peppers – $ 116 million
12. Reese Witherspoon – $ 115 million
13. Chuck Lorre – $ 100 million
14. Sean “Diddy” Combs – $ 90 million
15. Dick Wolf – $ 86 million
16. Howard Stern – $ 85 million
17. Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, David Crane – $ 82 million
18. Shonda Rhimes – $ 81 million
19. Neil Young – $ 80 million
20. Greg Berlanti – $ 75 million
21. Lindsey Buckingham – $ 73 million
22. Mötley Crüe – $ 72 million
23. Beach Boys – $ 64 million
24. Blake Shelton – $ 55 million
25. Taylor Swift – $ 52 million
Source: Capital

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