Taylor Swift

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The trope of the struggling musician exists for a reason; it's undoubtedly hard to make a living in music.

But once you hit the big time and can easily sell out arenas, the money starts rolling in. The 2010s were a transformative time for music and a lucrative time for these 10 musicians. Most of these statistics are from Forbes, who "measures the industry's top-earning musicians annually for the Celebrity 100 by looking at touring data from Pollstar, music consumption numbers from Nielsen and interviews with managers, agents and many of the stars themselves."

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MUSIC

10 Richest Musicians of All Time

Discover which celebrity musician has the highest net worth.

Beyonce

Photo by A.RICARDO/ Shutterstock

Musicians love money so much that they're always singing for it.

While some musicians sing in the subway for very small amounts of money, other musicians sing on big stages for whole piles of the stuff. Some of them even have a billion dollars. That's so rich! Here at Popdust, we love music and money, so we're putting them together to make a list of the richest musicians in the whole world.

10. Julio Iglesias

$600 Million

Julio Iglesias is a Spanish singer and songwriter known for being the most commercially successful singer/songwriter in Continental Europe. His bank account reflects that success because it's full of sweet, sweet dough.

9. Jimmy Buffett

$600 Million

Dads love Jimmy Buffett because he sings all about cheeseburgers. But when Jimmy Buffett says "cheeseburgers," what he really means is that he has so much money.

8. Bono

$700 Million

U2's Bono loves charity almost as much as he loves having loads of money. He's probably the most charitable musician in the whole world, mainly because he's always telling everyone how much money he has. It's 700 million dollars!

7. Celine Dion

$800 Million

Celine Dion sang the big song in Titanic, which makes sense because she has a titanic amount of money! She never has to worry about sinking either, unless she's sinking into a big tub of coinage.

6. Dr. Dre

$820 Million

In spite of his name, Dr. Dre has never received his doctorate degree. He has, however, received stacks and stacks of real fat cash.

5. Herb Alpert

$850 Million

We Googled Herb Alpert and, according to Wikipedia, he is "an American jazz musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass." We've never heard of them before, but he sure has a lot of moolah!

4. Madonna

$850 Million

Madonna is no virgin when it comes to having lots of money. While she may be best known for her many controversies, maybe she should be best known for being very rich.

3. P. Diddy

$855 Million

With his own record company and a men's fashion line under his belt, it's no wonder that P. Diddy is rolling in the green.

2. Jay-Z

$1 Billion

Jay-Z is extra rich because he's not just a rapper, he's also a music mogul. Even better, he's married to Beyonce, and if the two pooled their money together, they'd even be able to buy the #1 spot on this list!

1. Paul McCartney

$1.2 Billion

Paul McCartney from The Beatles has the most money of any musician. He could even buy two of the smaller musicians if he wanted, like Jimmy Buffet and maybe Bruce Springsteen. who didn't even make this list.