Culture
Swift success: Taylor Swift was the top earning music artist in the US last year

Swift success: Taylor Swift was the top earning music artist in the US last year

Taylor Swift has topped Billboard's list of the highest paid music artists, raking in more than $23m last year in the US according to their estimates. It turns out that dropping 2 new albums and a re-release of an older album in one year is a good way to please your fanbase.

Billboard estimates that roughly half of Swift's music income came from streaming payouts — with another $10m from sales and $3.2m from publishing rights. Swift didn't make a dime from touring thanks to COVID restrictions, but that wasn't the case for everyone.

Queen of touring

Celine Dion may have only made an estimated $300k from streaming last year, but she more than made up for it with an enormous haul from touring. Dion squeezed in 23 shows before the corona curtain came down, equating to almost $50m in gross ticket sales — of which she took home $17m according to Billboard estimates. The Eagles similarly managed to squeeze in some shows, netting the classic group more than $11m for their efforts.

Check out the full list of music money makers at Billboard.

More Culture

See all Culture
Family in front of TV

Hollywood may have its best year at the box office since 2019, but streaming audiences are still obsessed with old content

Viewers are opting for catalog content over new shows and movies across (pretty much) every major streamer.

Tom Jones6/29/26
culture
Tom Jones

The BBC has become the world’s top news website... by collapsing a little less than its competition

Press Gazette just published its annual look at the biggest news sites in the world across all languages; for the most part, it doesn’t make for particularly pretty reading.

The journalism industry publication’s latest update, which is based on estimates provided by Similarweb for May, found that 37 of the world’s 50 most visited news sites saw their reach shrink. Press Gazette highlighted that American outlets have been hit particularly hard by declining Google traffic compared to European counterparts, owing to the platform’s AI features rolling out earlier in the US.

Even the BBC, having climbed the rankings from last year to top the 2026 chart — reportedly in part thanks to Similarweb’s decision to combine the “.co.uk” and “.com” versions of the URL, given that the sites redirect to each other depending on the user’s location — showed a 1.9% decline from last year.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC and Chartr Limited produce fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and are fully owned subsidiaries of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Money, LLC, Robinhood U.K. Ltd, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, Robinhood Gold, LLC, Robinhood Asset Management, LLC, Robinhood Credit, Inc., Robinhood Ventures DE, LLC and, where applicable, its managed investment vehicles.