money makers
On Sunday (March 23), two days after a South Korean court ruled that ADOR, an imprint of K-pop giant HYBE, retains the right to manage the groundbreaking girl band NewJeans, the five-member act performed its first and possibly only concert in Hong Kong under a new moniker, NJZ — a result of its attempt to break free from the label. After debuting a new song, “Pit Stop,” the group announced to the sold-out crowd that it was going on hiatus “out of respect for the court’s decision.”
The pronouncement added another twist to a nearly year-long battle between HYBE-owned ADOR and its biggest act, who allege they were mistreated by the label. (ADOR disputes these claims.)
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It’s a fight that could have industry-wide ramifications. The country’s five largest pop music organizations argued at a press conference in February that if NewJeans/NJZ was allowed to break its contract with HYBE/ADOR, it could “break the K-pop industry from the inside,” according to Seoul newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily.
A separate lawsuit to determine if NewJeans/NJZ can legally terminate its contract with ADOR begins April 3, but if the court sides with HYBE/ADOR and the group refuses to make new music, industry insiders wonder whether a legal win would be a pyrrhic victory for HYBE.
HYBE/ADOR and NewJeans/NJZ declined to comment on the financial impacts of the disagreement. An ADOR spokesperson said only that its exclusive contract with NewJeans/NJZ is legally binding and called the group’s performance in Hong Kong as NJZ and its “unilateral announcement of a suspension of activities” regrettable. The members of NewJeans/NJZ filed an objection to the court ruling against its independent activities on Monday (March 24).
HYBE is the company behind one of the highest-selling K-pop acts of all time, BTS. When members of BTS took time away from the group for military service in recent years, the company sought to diversify beyond its tentpole artist with other acts — often through imprints like ADOR — and such acquisitions as Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, Atlanta hip-hop label Quality Control and Latin music company Exile Music Group.
In its fiscal 2024, HYBE reported its highest revenue-generating year in its nearly 20-year history, having generated revenue of 2.25 trillion Korean won ($1.58 billion). But operating profit, a financial metric that subtracts operating costs like legal fees from a company’s gross profit, fell 38% from the prior fiscal year to 184 billion won ($128.7 million), a decline the company attributed to BTS’ temporary break, a shift in sales mix due to new debuts, and strategic investments in infrastructure and new businesses.
The controversy with ADOR and NewJeans/NJZ coincided with a steep decline in HYBE’s share price in 2024. HYBE stock was priced at 230,500 won ($172.33) on April 19, the day HYBE launched an investigation into whether ex-ADOR CEO Min Hee-Jin — who is a defendant in the lawsuit — usurped management of NewJeans/NJZ. Min was asked to resign, and in the weeks that followed, HYBE accused Min of trying to take ADOR independent and, with it, NewJeans/NJZ. On Sept. 23, after a YouTube video of the NewJeans/NJZ members demanding that Min be reinstated went viral, HYBE’s stock price plunged to a 52-week low of 158,000 Korean won ($112), down 31.5% from that April high.
While its share price has rebounded — on Tuesday (March 25), it was worth 240,000 Korean won ($163.49), 14.5% from a year ago — the dispute with NewJeans/NJZ may lead to sunk costs.
As with A&R across the music industry, the model for producing a K-pop supergroup is costly at the outset. It can cost between 1 billion Korean won ($681,000) to 10 billion won ($6.8 million) up front, according to a K-pop executive quoted in Korea JoongAng Daily. K-pop companies first pay off debt, then investors, before paying the artists. If the artists break their contract to go to another agency before ultimately turning a profit, the agency is left holding the bag, the executive told the paper. Bunnies, the official fan club of NewJeans/NJZ, criticized this statement, saying the group is seeking creative autonomy and a better deal.
NewJeans announced in February it wanted to go by a new name — NJZ — and member Pham Ngoc Han, who goes by Hanni, told CNN she hoped the new name would help the group turn “this rough period into something more exciting.” ADOR requested Billboard refer to the group as NewJeans, saying, “The Korean court … confirm[ed] ADOR’s status as the legitimate exclusive management agency of the NewJeans members and prevent the Artists from entering into advertising contracts independently without ADOR’s approval.”
The five women in the group — who perform as Minjin, Danielle, Haerin, Hyein and Hanni — formed NewJeans/NJZ in 2022, and they now range in age from 18 to 21. Several have said they are concerned the legal battle with ADOR would define their careers.
“We’ve known from the start that this journey wasn’t going to be easy and even though we accept the court’s ruling and this whole process, we had to speak up to protect the values that we believe in,” the members said at the end of their hour-long headlining performance in Hong Kong on Sunday, adding it’s a decision they “don’t regret at all.”
Whether it was Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” LiAngelo Ball’s “Tweaker,” or the six songs at the heart of Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s epic rap battle last year, Billboard has recently spent a lot of time reporting on how much money a hit song generates.
For a look back at our coverage, we estimated how much the top 10 songs of 2024 earned, what GELO’s locker room anthem has netted, and the millions made from Drake and Lamar’s diss tracks.
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These stories sparked questions from readers, including one that came up repeatedly: Does a hit song today make more money than a hit did before streaming took off?
We asked this question of roughly a dozen music economists, entertainment industry bankers, and record label and streaming company executives, and they largely agreed that streaming has increased the long-term value of a hit song. However, hit songs used to drive album sales, which may have been more lucrative upfront.
It is difficult to directly compare the value of a hit song in 2024 to a hit song in 1999 — the year that record industry revenue peaked in the modern era — because the business largely moved away from issuing singles by the late 1990s. To hear a hit song, then, a fan would buy an album for as much as $18.98.
In 1999, when albums were the dominant configuration for music, 88 albums sold more than 1 million units in the U.S., according to Billboard. Albums often sold for more than their wholesale price of $12, which could mean certain older hits had a greater upfront value. However, the sources Billboard spoke with for this story all agreed that after a fan owned an album, they had little incentive to pay for that particular music again — so after about 12-18 months, the album would stop making much money.
In contrast, streaming keeps all music closer to fans’ fingertips, and hits tend to continue making money over a longer period, as opposed to a brief hype window in the album sales era.
One longtime record label executive who asked to remain anonymous estimated that a gold record in 1999 generated more than $6 million in sales, based on a wholesale price of around $12. Adjusted for inflation, that’s the equivalent of $11.3 million in 2024 dollars, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve.
In 2024, the biggest hit was Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” and Billboard estimated it generated $10.7 million from U.S. audio, video and programmed streams, digital downloads, and radio airplay spins. But due to streaming’s long tail, which has helped keep “A Bar Song” in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100, the track has continued earning significant streams in 2025: more than 140 million on-demand audio and video streams, or $192,000 in additional streaming revenue, just this year.
“[Back then], after a huge spike in revenue, a hit would have decayed over time by 60%, 70%, 80%, and eventually the song would drop to a much lower base,” says Concord CEO Bob Valentine. “Now in the streaming world, a song comes out, you get the huge pop from consumption and revenue, and because of the way algorithms keep a song in playlists and rotation, the song is much stickier. It has a higher base.”
Valentine says this is why companies like his have been able to persuade outside investors that music royalties can be securitized and sold to institutional investors like insurance companies. Concord has become the music industry’s model for raising money from such asset backed securitizations (ABS), having raised more than $5 billion to date.
While Concord is known for owning famous catalogs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, it scored a top 10 hit in 2024 with Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby,” which Billboard estimates generated around $7.4 million.
If Concord’s catalogs are like bonds — generating consistent revenue that can be relied on for decades — hits are more like venture capital. After an initial investment, a hit can present substantial upside, Valentine says. Concord is now comfortably the fourth or fifth largest music company thanks to the strength of its publishing division and catalog, so it can afford to take risks to get more hits, which is why it’s pushing to develop its front-line business to release more songs like “Million Dollar Baby.”
The music industry globally made $41.3 billion in 2023, according to the most recent data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d´Auteurs et Compositeurs (CISAC).
The IFPI, which reports figures on an absolute dollar basis, not adjusted for inflation, says global recorded music revenues are at their highest level since it began tracking them in 1999.
Several sources interviewed for this story noted that, despite record-high revenues in the music industry, not everyone who contributes to making or performing a hit song makes more money today, and that many songwriters may have made more money in 1999.
For one thing, the number of songwriters credited on a hit song has increased significantly in the last decade, according to an analysis by Chris Dalla Riva in 2023. Dalla Riva found that the average number of songwriters per Hot 100 No. 1 hit rose from 1.8 during the 1970s to 5.3 in the 2010s. He noted that with interpolations, many songs credit far more songwriters: For example, Beyoncé’s Renaissance song “Alien Superstar” listed 24 songwriters.
“There is more money, we can all agree, but there are way more mouths to feed,” former Spotify chief economist and author Will Page said in an interview with the BBC in January.
Songwriters don’t just make less money because more of them work on major hits; they also make less because of the way streaming changed payouts, sources say. When the industry revolved around album sales, a songwriter on a less popular song earned the same as a songwriter on the album’s most popular song.
The rising tide effect no longer applies today because fans stream songs on a mostly a la carte basis.
Additional reporting was contributed by Ed Christman.
The breakout rap hit “Tweaker” from the middle Ball brother, LiAngelo Ball, has generated nearly $640,000 since it first began its meteoric rise from NBA locker rooms to the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Released on Jan. 3 under the moniker GELO — Ball also raps under the alias G3 —“Tweaker” came out on Ball’s family label, Born […]
Heidi Montag’s 15-year-old dance-pop album Superficial has generated nearly $150,000 from streaming and digital sales since the MTV reality show star lost her home to the Pacific Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles in early January.
In the days following the destruction of the couple’s home on Jan. 7, Montag’s husband Spencer Pratt took to TikTok, sharing videos of the ashes and their children’s burned toys and asking viewers to stream wife Heidi’s music. Pratt later told Variety in a Jan. 17 article that he made a combined $24,000 from donations on TikTok, but he had no idea if they were making any money from her music.
His plea appears to be paying off. From Jan. 3 to Jan. 23, Montag’s 2010 album Superficial and its individual songs have generated $147,011.61 from streaming, digital album and song sales and publishing revenue, according to Billboard estimates based on data from Luminate.H
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This month, Montag made her first appearance on the Billboard Artist 100 chart, which ranks the most popular artists of the week, and Superficial and its songs landed on the Billboard 200, Top Album Sales, Top Dance Albums and Hot Dance/Pop Songs charts for the week of Jan. 25. Her appearance on those charts may translate into additional revenue for her new album Superficial 2, which the artist released last Friday (Jan. 24).
Montag has also benefitted from widespread support. TikTok launched a Heidi hub with a link to create content using a sped-up version of her song “I’ll Do It.” (TikTok says that, as of Jan. 28, there are more than 2.8 million creations using the track — both the original and sped-up remix.) The online marketing hub LinkTree paid for a billboard in Times Square with the message “Stream Superficial by Heidi Montag” and Montag appeared on Good Morning America, according to her TikTok posts.
The ramp-up in revenue has been swift. In the first week of January, Billboard estimates that the album produced $1,762.97. Following Montag and Pratt’s request, the album and songs produced $98,002.57 in the second week of January and $48,009.04 in the third week of January.
Digital album sales have contributed the greatest amount of revenue so far, generating revenues of $82,497.22, based on Billboard estimates.
In the first week 2025, nine digital copies of the album were sold, worth about $50. In the second week of 2025, 11,258 digital copies of the album were sold, worth about $62,930; and in the third week of 2025, 3,484 digital copies of the album were sold, worth about $19,475.
Montag and Pratt did not respond to requests for comment made to their publicists.
Additional reporting by Ed Christman.
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was the most streamed, downloaded and highest grossing song of 2024 in the United States, according to a Billboard review of Luminate’s annual report published on Wednesday (Jan. 15).
The anthemic hip-hop-infused country song generated $6.59 million from digital song sales and on-demand audio streams in the United States for the year spanning from Dec. 29, 2023 to Jan. 2, 2025, having spent a historic 19 weeks in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100.
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The top 10 most digitally consumed songs of 2024 as identified by Luminate generated a combined $53.4 million from on-demand audio streams, such as when the song is played on Spotify, and digital song sales, like when a digital download is purchased through Apple’s music store.
Another country crossover hit, Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” featuring Morgan Wallen, took the No. 2 spot on Luminate’s list, and generated $5.76 million from sales and on-demand audio streams, while Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” came in third on that list, and generated $5.65 million. Those royalties are paid out to an artist’s record label and music publisher; Billboard was not able to determine the artists’ share of those earnings.
The remainder of the top 10 most digitally consumed songs were Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” which earned $5.57 million; Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” which earned $5.63 million; Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” which earned $5.2 million; Zach Bryan’s 2023 release featuring Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything,” which generated $5.03 million; Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby,” which earned $4.99 million; Billie Eilish’s “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” which earned $4.53 million; and Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” which generated $4.39 million.
Lamar’s “Not Like Us” ranked fifth, behind Swims’ “Lose Control,” on the list of most streamed and downloaded songs. However, “Not Like Us” generated slightly more money than “Lose Control” — “Not Like Us” netted $5.63 million compared to $5.57 million for “Lose Control” — because it was streamed 37.7 million more times. While “Lose Control” had more digital downloads, and a single digital download pays out more than a single stream, digital sales for both songs only totaled 430,000.
As the music industry’s leading data provider, Luminate tracks consumption data from more than 500 retailers, streaming and radio companies, among others. This top 10 list from Luminate’s report focused on digital song sales and on-demand audio streams because around 90% of music consumption activity comes from digital formats in the U.S. Luminate stripped out video streams from this year’s chart because of a change in how one company provided video data in 2024.
These 10 songs made an additional $30.3 million from video streams, programmed streams, such as a play on satellite radio, and radio airplay spins in the U.S. Including that revenue, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song” was still the top money-making hit with $10.74 million, but Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” came in second with $10.22 million, largely because of its success on radio and programmed streams. The songs would have also made additional revenue from sales and streams around the world, metrics that are not included in Luminate’s ranking.
Some songs did particularly well on video. Lamar’s Drake diss track “Not Like Us” had more than 216 million on-demand video streams in the U.S. last year, which generated over $1 million from master recording and publishing rights, Billboard estimates.
Here is Luminate’s full list of the top 10 songs of 2024 ranked by sales and streaming-equivalent units based on on-demand audio streams with Billboard‘s estimates on how much money each song generated from those categories.
When Brookfield Asset Management invested $2 billion in Primary Wave roughly two years ago, a representative from the Canadian fund predicted that just as there has been a wave of comic book superhero movies, there would a wave of musician biopics.
“Music is going to be like the Marvel and DC comic catalogs,” Angelo Ruffino, who was then the managing partner at Brookfield behind the Primary Wave investment, said in October 2022. “There are just so many ways to monetize music that I think are in the early innings.”
Hollywood has churned out superhero films, from Batman to Black Panther, but the genre has been drawing smaller audiences of late. With a flurry of music biopics set for release in the next few years — including feature films about Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Queen Latifah, four films about each member of The Beatles, and maybe one about The Bee Gees — have we reached peak biopic?
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The top post on Reddit’s subreddit page about Dylan as of this writing is titled, “On not being interested in A Complete Unknown,” and it is far from the only gripe about dramatizations of currently touring musicians on the Internet.
However many factors are contributing to a packed pipeline of musician biopics, and consumer demand just one. By that measure, many recent music biopics have been hits. About half of the 25 highest grossing music biopics of all time, according to boxofficemojo.com, were released since 2014, with Bohemian Rhapsody about Queen at No. 1 with $216.4 million, Straight Outta Compton about N.W.A. at No. 2 with $161.2 million and Elvis at No. 3 with $151 million all in gross revenue in the United States.
Natalia Nastaskin, chief content officer at Primary Wave, which as involved with the 2022 release “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody”—No. 24 in the top 25 grossing biopics—says demand remains high. But the years it can take to land the starring actors, directors and producers essential to making a hit movie may mean these films continue to trickle out over the coming years.
“I do think we are going to see more of these biopics because we are always fascinated by the stories of our rock stars and the behind-the-scenes story of their lives,” Nastaskin tells Billboard. “How many more biopics will we see? Really hitting that cultural zeitgeist may take several years.”
Primary Wave is currently involved in biopics about Boyz II Men and Boy George—both in production.
Another factor that has the potential to disrupt the normal line between demand and supply are the different ways Hollywood and the music industry make money off these films. Hollywood defines a successful movie by the revenue it grosses; the music industry is more interested in how it drives moviegoers to stream the music, buy merch and the tangential licensing opportunities delivered by the music’s resurging relevance.
By those definitions, Elvis was a smash. All of the activity that the Baz Luhrmann biopic drove for Elvis’s music and brand boosted the Presley estate’s estimated value to around $1 billion 2022 from an estimated $400 million to $600 million in 2020.
It may take years to measure the impact of Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan on his catalog, at least until 2025, which is when the Michael Jackson biopic is slated for release. With The Beatles films expected in 2027, there seems like no shortage of musician biopics to come.
In calling for Universal Music Group (UMG) to move its stock listing and legal headquarters to the U.S. from Amsterdam by next year, board member and billionaire activist investor William Ackman argued the move could make the company more valuable. But financial sources are split on whether that would be the case.
On Friday (Nov. 8), Ackman said his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Holdings, which owns 10.25% of UMG’s stock, will exercise its right to require the company to register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission following violent attacks on Israeli soccer fans on Thursday night (Nov. 7) in Amsterdam, where UMG’s stock is listed on the Euronext exchange. But would the move actually benefit the company, as Ackman seems to believe?
“It could noticeably increase UMG’s value because even though it will make your taxes a little higher and you’re going to spend a whole lot more on expensive securities lawyers, it gives you access to the giant U.S. retail market, and UMG is the perfect kind of company for retail investors,” says Erik Gordon, a professor at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
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In the U.S., more than 62% of individual adults own stocks, a group referred to as retail investors. While big institutional investors, like Pershing, account for about three-quarters of the trading volume on U.S. stock markets, like the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange, retail investors are a powerful and growing group. Since the start of the pandemic, when retail investors on Reddit fueled a run-up in the share price of companies like GameStop and AMC, more than 30 million new investors have opened brokerage accounts, according to a University of Missouri study.
Right now, four institutional investors control nearly 60% of UMG’s current pool of stock. In his post last week, Ackman argued that lack of liquidity — in part because only a slim portion of UMG’s stock frequently changes hands — could improve if UMG listed in the U.S.
“UMG trades at a large discount to its intrinsic value with limited liquidity in significant part due to it not having its primary listing on the [New York Stock Exchange] or Nasdaq Exchange and not being eligible for S&P 500 and other index inclusion,” he wrote.
Ackman’s argument is essentially that if UMG lists and starts trading in the U.S., its value will make it an important stock in U.S. financial markets, which in a few years will earn it inclusion in a major index, says Gordon. Getting included in an index, like the S&P 500, creates more demand for a company’s stock because mutual funds and exchange traded funds that track the S&P begin to buy the stock.
Over the weekend, UMG stated that Pershing can request that UMG list in the U.S. if it sells at least $500 million worth of its own UMG shares as part of that listing.
“If I had to guess, Ackman will end up with the right to sell his shares in the U.S. public market and that the company will issue new shares in the U.S. so that Ackman isn’t the only guy selling,” Gordon says.
One equity analyst believes UMG would not become a more valuable company if it moved to a U.S. exchange because its shares already trade at a premium to shares of Warner Music Group (WMG). In a Nov. 1 investor note, J.P Morgan analysts wrote about the premium, arguing that “UMG should trade at a significant premium to WMG…to reflect greater scale, a better track record for growth and consistent margin expansion, best-in-class management and better governance.”
According to Billboard’s calculations, UMG shares were recently trading at a roughly 17 times multiple trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA, while WMG shares were trading at about 11 times multiple.
UMG moving its stock to an American exchange also comes with another downside: the operational expense that U.S.-listed public companies face from shareholder lawsuits.
“One area U.S. issuers have to manage, unlike non-U.S. issuers, is the volume of shareholder litigation that gets brought in the U.S.,” says Michael Poster, a music industry lawyer at Michelman & Robinson. “It’s expensive to deal with litigation, there are a lot of fees associated with managing, settling and litigating the claims, and it’s frankly a distraction for management. Those things contribute to making trading in the U.S. more expensive from an operational point of view.”
When Lee Greenwood released “God Bless The USA” in the spring of 1984, “it was not a massive hit,” the 82-year-old country music icon tells Billboard.
The song peaked at No. 7 in July 1984 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, but it has returned to the charts several times over the decades, including over Fourth of July weekend 2020, the first year of the pandemic — when it hit No. 1 on the Digital Song Sales chart.
The anthem’s enduring appeal has led to it being played in the wake of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks and the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. It has been covered by Beyoncé, Dolly Parton, and on Friday (Nov. 1), Drew Jacobs released a rock version. And, of course, it is consistently played at political events, including every Republican National Convention since 1988 — Greenwood sang it live at the last one in July — and now as the walk-on music for former President Trump.
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“To be honest, having President Trump use ‘USA’ as the song he walks out to every single place he goes is a dream come true for any artist,” says Greenwood, who adds he wrote the song for all Americans. “Millions of people hear my song on a weekly basis all because President Trump uses it.”
So what is that worth? Billboard spoke with Greenwood and ran the numbers to estimate how much he stands to gain from the Trump bump.
STREAMING
Greenwood says he owns the writer’s and publishing rights to “God Bless The USA,” and that peermusic administers the publishing and synch licensing for it and other songs in his catalog.
Greenwood says he has never charged for the use ‘USA’ at rallies by the former president, whom he knows from his wife Kim Greenwood’s work with the Miss Universe Organization. He says that he did charge the Ronald Reagan campaign $1 to use the song in 1988, but “just because they wanted to have ‘paper on the deal.’
“I don’t look at money as the driver for my music,” he adds.
That said, “God Bless The USA” has earned Greenwood a nice bit of coin this year. The song enjoyed a noticeable increase in consumption, especially in the immediate weeks following Greenwood’s performance at the Republican National Convention.
In the 16 weeks since the RNC, “USA” has averaged over 4,100 song equivalents in the United States, according to Luminate. That’s an increase over the roughly 3,000 U.S. song equivalents it averaged in the 27 weeks of 2024 that preceded the convention.
That post-convention total includes an average of 568,000 U.S. primarily on-demand audio streams compared to 468,000 in the weeks leading up to the convention.
Compared to Greenwood’s “USA”, Sam & Dave’s “Hold On I’m Coming” has seen a smaller average bump. That song is currently the subject of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in August by the estate of Isaac Hayes, who co-wrote the song. The complaint alleges that the song has been used multiple times during rallies without authorization.
“Hold On I’m Coming” averaged over 5,200 song equivalents in the U.S. since the RNC, just a smidge over the 5,000 U.S. song equivalents it averaged in the 27 weeks before the convention.
Looking at U.S. streaming and download revenue for the songs, the master recording rights for “Hold On” generated more revenue overall than “USA” after the convention — an average of $4,613.81 per week, compared to an equivalent $3,337.24.
However, the bump the songs’ master recording rights netted was bigger for “USA” than “Hold On.” Greenwood’s signature song’s master recording rights generated $744 more per week on average since the convention, compared to $148 for “Hold On.”
That adds up to an estimated Trump bump of an additional nearly $12,000 from the song’s master recordings over the past 16 weeks. These calculations are for label revenue, and Greenwood’s share of that figure would depend on his contract, details of which are not known.
On the publishing side, Greenwood song’s earned an average of about $675 a week from U.S. streams and downloads in the 27 weeks leading up to the convention and $845 a week after. That means the song produced an average of $3,267 a week — master recordings and publishing combined — leading up to the convention and $4,182 a week after the convention.
Billboard estimates Greenwood’s U.S. master recording catalog revenues, not including publishing, brought in $219,000 for his label so far this year compared to almost $184,000 in 2023 — a Trump bump of approximately $35,000 year to date.
THE TRUMP… SLUMP?
Not all songs used at Trump events enjoyed the same post-rally glow. The Foo Fighters‘ “My Hero” was played to introduce Robert Kennedy Jr. at an August rally for the former president in Arizona without permission, according to the band. At the time, a spokesperson for the Foo Fighters said any royalties gained from post-rally plays of the song would be donated to Trump’s challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. (A spokesperson for the band did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)
Since “My Hero” was played at the rally, it has declined in popularity, according to data from Luminate. Prior to the convention, the song’s U.S. streams and downloads averaged almost $10,100 in master recording revenue a week. But after the band denounced the song’s use by the Trump campaign, the audio stream counts average weekly plays fell by almost 200,000 from 1.668 million to 1.488 million. Consequently, revenue that had averaged nearly $10,100 a week fell to just below $9,200 a week, a weekly decline of approximately $900.
When Beyoncé sings about “rugged whiskey” and the “dive bar we always thought was nice” on her country album Cowboy Carter, she was definitely not talking about her whisky.
Launched this September in partnership with luxury giant LVMH’s Moët Hennessy, Queen Bey’s premium rye whisky SirDavis retails for $89 bottle and was inspired by her paternal great-grandfather’s legacy as a successful Prohibition-era moonshine maker.
It’s the latest product from Beyoncé, who, in addition to performing 56 shows for her $580-million-grossing 2023 Renaissance World Tour, also released a perfume called CÉ NOIR and a haircare line called Cécred over the past year.
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Fans are feverishly speculating on what genre she might reclaim next for a potential Act III album. So, why would she spend her precious time and invaluable brand power to release a whisky? And how much money might she make from it?
Billboard interviewed half a dozen alcohol industry experts and leading entertainment lawyers, and while they unanimously agreed that it is too early to guess at SirDavis’ sales — it only launched in August — they said the whiskey fits into a modern-day marketing strategy as multi-faceted as Queen Bey’s career.
“It’s an extension of the marketing push for her latest album, which has references to traditional Americana and American heritage,” says Spiros Malandrakis, head of alcoholic drinks research for Euromonitor, referencing Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, which came out in April. “What is one of the most iconic products that encapsulates American heritage? It’s an American whisky that has roots dating back to moonshine.”
Cowboy Carter debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart dated April 13 with 407,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending April 4. It has since racked up a total of 1,322,896 equivalent album units, according to Luminate, and marks her her eighth No. 1 album. Whisky comes up in the lyrics of several Cowboy Carter songs, as do Levi’s jeans — spelled “Levii’s Jeans” on the track that features Post Malone — and Queen Bey is currently featured in an ad campaign for the classic denim company.
But given the international nature of her brand, Malandrakis says, Bey’s whisky works to extend its appeal beyond a strictly Americana audience. SirDavis whisky dropped the e, as the Scottish do, and it incorporates grains often used in Scotch and Japanese whiskey.
“She kind of winks towards this international side of her brand,” Malandrakis says. “She is a black American icon. She is also equally, potentially even more so, an international icon.”
WORTH A SHOT
Celebrity liquor deals have the potential to make superstars into billionaires, like the sale of Casamigos Tequila did for George Clooney, and before that what Cîroc vodka and DeLeón tequila did for Sean “Diddy” Combs. Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z did his first liquor deal in 2012 — D’ussé Cognac with Bacardi — and in 2021 he sold half of his champagne Ace of Spades to LVMH. As of May, Forbes estimated Beyoncé’s net worth to be $760 million.
Jordan Bromley, head of Mannatt’s entertainment transactions and finance practice, says that these kinds of deals can be highly lucrative, whether the talent receives an upfront check or sticks around for two or three years to build the brand and then negotiates a big payout when they exit.
Beyoncé x Sir Davis
Mason Poole; Julian Dakdouk
“This should be a tentpole of any icon’s business portfolio, and not just in liquor but maybe home goods, athletic goods or venues,” says Bromley, citing Rihanna’s Fenty as one of the most successful examples of an artist becoming a billionaire thanks to a business outside of a music career. “You’re not stressing out over a record label audit—which you should do every two or three years—because you’re a 20% owner in a billion dollar company.”
However, Bromely says, there is risk for icons in lending their star power to a product.
“Is there risk? Absolutely—only the entire trust you’ve created for your brand,” Bromley says.
The product has to be good and it has to sell, and the ingredients necessary for those two components are not the same with all products. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that Beyoncé and Adidas AG ended their partnership, the “adidas x IVY PARK” collection, after disappointing sales.
With spirits, sources say success usually seems to follow when fans believe a superstar authentically enjoys drinking the spirit in their spare time.
The SirDavis story posits that Beyoncé has whisky-making in her blood, and followers of her social media accounts know she has frequently posted about tasting and collecting rare Japanese whiskeys.
It is not known if Beyoncé has an ownership stake in SirDavis, and LVMH, which owns Moët Hennessy, rarely breaks out sales for its individual products. But Malandrakis says most celebrities exit their liquor company partnerships within a few years with a sizeable check.
“Not because they lose interest but they realize these things have a timeline. At some point Beyonce will not be as relevant, as strange as that sounds,” Malandrakis says. “The longevity of products like that is ultimately down to how good they are and how much they create for the community.”
Money Makers is a new column in which Billboard unpacks one financial issue a week for an artist in the news. Thanks for reading, and if you have suggestions or tips, email me at ediltsmarshall@billboard.com.
While 2022 will be remembered as the year that Taylor Swift made history as the first artist to populate the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with songs from her album Midnights (among other chart records), Billboard’s annual Money Makers ranking of music’s top royalty and box-office earners reveals that she dominated 2021 as well.
Swift, who released two (Taylor’s Version) rerecorded albums, finished the year as the No. 1 earner globally with an estimated $65.8 million in take-home pay. That’s an impressive sum considering she did not tour, which usually constitutes the lion’s share of an act’s annual income, and last year’s runner-up, The Rolling Stones, spent three months on the road last fall concluding their No Filter Tour.
Swift topped the ranking because she owns half of her studio record catalog and because of the strength of her sales and streaming income, $29.8 million and $28.9 million, respectively, in a year that saw her international streams surpass her U.S. streams, 9 billion to 6.8 billion, a 34% increase.
The Stones’ live dates, all of which took place in the United States, resulted in a $44.5 million box-office take. That played the biggest role in boosting the veteran rockers to No. 1 on Billboard’s U.S. Money Makers ranking with a total income of $50.8 million.
But Swift, who finished second in the U.S. ranking — she and the Stones have swapped the top two spots since 2018 — was not far behind with $38.8 million, largely on the strength of her master recording royalties.
Compared side-by-side, the top five earners on the global and U.S. Money Makers rankings are nearly identical, with Harry Styles holding the No. 3 spot on both, $41.3 million and $37 million, respectively; and Drake at No. 5, with $30.7 million and $23.8 million. The big difference can be found at No. 4, where K-pop superstars BTS reside on the global ranking, with a $38.4 million in 2021 take-home pay, and the hard-touring Eagles occupy the U.S. tally, with earnings of $27.3 million.
Methodology
Money Makers was compiled with 2021 Luminate and Billboard Boxscore data, the RIAA’s physical and digital revenue report for 2021, and IFPI global revenue statistics. All revenue figures cited are Billboard estimates and may not equal the sum of the subcategories due to rounding and the omission of revenue categories. Global sales were extrapolated for 21 artists that ranked highest on the 2020 Money Makers list. Global artist royalties were extrapolated using U.S. revenue totals, minus 30% of international royalties in line with major-label contractual clauses for foreign distribution.
U.S. formulas were used to estimate publishing revenue. Calculating royalties from master-recording performance rights was not possible because those rights do not exist for most uses in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, references to streaming totals consist of combined on-demand audio, video and programmed streams. References to recording-career totals are the sum of an act’s sales, streaming and publishing earnings. Revenue from featured-artist appearances, merchandising, synchronization and sponsorship is not included. Touring revenue, after the manager’s cut, equals 34% of an act’s Boxscore. Sales royalties were calculated based on physical and digital albums and track sales. Streaming royalties consist of on-demand audio and video streams, and estimated royalties from webcasting, SiriusXM and Music Choice.
The following royalty rates were used: album and track sales, 22% of retail revenue; 66% of wholesale if the artist owns his or her masters. On-demand streaming royalties were calculated using blended audio and video rates of, respectively, $0.0053 and $0.0038 per stream, applied against a 37% superstar-artist royalty rate; 50% for heritage artists (acts that have released at a minimum of 10 albums or been active for at least 20 years); and 79% for artist-owned masters. Further, a blended statutory subscription per-stream rate of $0.0024 was applied to programmed streams and per-play estimated rates of 74 cents for Music Choice and $46 for SiriusXM. Royalties for programmed streams were calculated on a similar basis using a 50% base royalty rate; 68% for artists that own some of their masters and 100% for artists that own all their masters, minus 5% for side performers.
Publishing royalties were estimated using statutory mechanical rates for album and track sales. The Copyright Royalty Board streaming formula produced an average rate of 13.4% of streaming revenue, an average of $2.50 per play for hit songs; $1 per play for heritage spins and genre songs that didn’t attain hit status; and per-play publishing rates of 40 cents for Music Choice, $8.33 for SiriusXM and $0.0003 for programmed streams. A 10% manager’s fee and 4% producer’s fee were deducted from the appropriate revenue streams.
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