How Much Do Tony Bennett’s Recordings Earn Every Year?
Written by djfrosty on July 25, 2023
Over the last three years, the Tony Bennett catalog generated an average of almost $2.17 million in global revenue, not including synchronization, while his estimated share of duets albums with Lady Gaga brought in another $1.22 million for a total of about $3.4 million, according to Billboard’s calculations.
Bennett, who died last week at the age of 96, enjoyed a recording career that extended back to 1952, with some 60-plus studio albums, 11 live albums, more than half a dozen collaborative albums and over 30 compilations, almost all of which were released through Columbia Records. His final album, released in September 2021, was Love For Sale, his second of two collaborative albums with Lady Gaga, and was nominated for album of the year at the 64th annual Grammy Awards.
Overall, Bennett’s solo catalog has averaged almost 122,000 album consumption units annually over the last three years, while his collaborations with Gaga have averaged about 88,000 album consumption units during that time period. Besides the greater volume for his solo output, there is also a greater disparity in individual year performances for the Bennett-Gaga catalog, with that catalog’s album consumption unit count jumping from 19,000 units in 2020 to 175,000 units in 2021, thanks to the release of Love For Sale that year, before falling back to nearly 70,000 units in 2022.
But due to how each catalog performs in the various music formats, the overall dollar volume comes out almost the same for both Bennett’s solo work and his work with Gaga. The Bennett/Gaga albums’ revenue is slightly bigger than Bennett’s solo catalog revenue, coming in at an estimated $2.4 million, vs. his estimated solo revenue of $2.17 million. When split in half, their duets recordings revenue comes out to $1.216 million for each artist.
But the revenue sources for the two catalogs are very different, with physical formats dominating the Bennett/Gaga offering — coming in at $1.75 million in average annual revenue globally, Billboard estimates — vs. Bennett’s solo catalog, with an estimated $450,000 in global revenue from physical formats.
Like most heritage acts, Bennett lags far behind in streaming, averaging 129 million on-demand U.S. streams annually over the past three years, while globally his streams averaged 233.7 million plays. (In other words, U.S. plays comprised 55% of his global streams.) Even though Bennett lags behind most big acts in streaming, that’s more than twice as large as the nearly 60 million average annual streams that the Bennett/Gaga duet albums had. Consequently, Bennett’s solo streams generated an estimated $1.4 million per year vs. the duet albums, which garnered an average of $325,000 in annual revenue over the last three years.
Average annual downloads over the last three years were about the same in terms of revenue, coming in at an estimated $135,000 for the duets albums and $120,000 for Bennett’s solo recordings.
It’s important to note that this article only estimates how much revenue Bennett’s master recordings generate and doesn’t put an amount on his earnings. That’s because there’s no way to know what kind of royalty rate he gets, which could vary wildly. Would it be the 6% paid to artists back in the 1950s and 1960s? The 22% rate most superstars get nowadays on physical product? A higher percentage for digital and streaming? A rate of 50% or higher, since all of his albums have long since recouped? Does Bennett own his Columbia albums like other Sony superstars appear to have negotiated back in the day? And what kind of financial arrangements were made for the recordings with Lady Gaga? All these are questions with answers that remain unclear.
Unlike the revenue estimates in the above story which are derived from annual unit counts, revenue estimates for the Bennett song chart below was derived using 2022’s year-end unit counts for all activity to date since the release of the music recordings, based on format counts generated by the “artist summary” feature in Luminate’s trend reports.