Beyoncé and Adele lead Forbes Magazine’s 2017 list of highest-paid women in music.
Beyoncé is the highest-paid woman in music, pulling in a whopping $105 million pretax, according to Forbes.
As her album “Lemonade” hit stores on April 2016, Queen B established herself as queen of music and income over Adele and Taylor Swift, becoming the only person on the list to hit the nine-figures milestone.
Earning roughly two-thirds of Beyoncé’s total, Adele comes in second with a $69 million-dollar income.
Taylor Swift ($44 million), Celine Dion ($42 million), and Jennifer Lopez ($38 million) rank third, fourth, and fifth, respectively.
Following the top 5 high-earning woman in music are 71-year-old Dolly Parton, who ranks at no. 6 with a $37 million mark; Rihanna ($36 million), Britney Spears ($34 million) and Katy Perry, who closes in at $33 million.
Women on the rise but still lacking
Despite the success of the female stars on the final list, there are regrettably still more than twice as many men than women among music’s top-earning stars, Forbes reports.
For example, Diddy is the top-earning musician on the planet, pulling in a career-best $130 million pretax this year; Beyoncé comes in second.
Forbes reported Drake rounds out the top three of the world’s highest-paid musicians of 2017 with $94 million in income.
The ways of the Forbes study
In order to define the list, Forbes looked at pretax income from June 1, 2016 through June 1, 2017, then gathered the data from Nielsen SoundScan, Pollstar, the RIAA and interviews with industry insiders.
The final results did not take out fees charged by agents, managers, lawyers, and anyone else on the divas’ payrolls.
Finally, all double-digit millions did not win themselves a spot on this vaunted list, as Madonna, Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez did not reach the profit received by others.
