Celine listed as the 21st Money Maker in 2004

[Bellamy]

Celine listed as the 21st Money Maker in 2004 on RollingStone.com

21. Celine Dion

$24 MILLION

 

ON THE ROAD For Dion, hanging out at home -- Caesars Palace in Las Vegas -- meant more than $20 million a year in concert income.

ON CD Dion sold 1.5 million albums.

Last year's rank: 11

 

The "Moneymakers" list was compiled from extensive interviews with record-company executives, managers, lawyers, agents and publicists, and uses figures derived from Nielsen SoundScan, Pollstar, the Recording Industry Association of America, Amusement Business/Billboard, The Yellow Pages of Rock and ArtistDirect. Net figures reflect what performers take home after recording expenses have been deducted and managers, agents and lawyers have taken their cuts. All figures should be considered estimates. Robert LaFranco, a former editor at Forbes, wrote the 2004 "Rich List" in RS 944.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/i...ion=6.0.12.1040

 

 

I think they mean A New Day... Live in Las Vegas + Miracle album sold 1.5 million albums in USA in 2004.

[Ronny83]

Wow, great! Thank you for the info, Bellamy.

[Mozinha]

Thanks for the info

[MontYeo]

We're all contributing to Rene-Charles' college fees!

[Clari]

That's gonna be one smart kid!

[Bellamy]

An article about this list:

Balding pop stars still make big bucks

 

Rolling Stone list of music biz's top earners puts age above abs

 

JOHN LELAND

 

New York Times

 

 

The universal fantasy about being a rock star, at least the G-rated part, goes something like this: You make wildly popular new music, see your likeness splashed across magazine covers and MTV, and worry occasionally about getting over the hill. You have great hair.

 

But according to a new list of the 50 top-earning pop stars published in Rolling Stone, over the hill is the new golden pasture. Half the top 10 headliners are older than 50, and two are over 60. Only one act, Linkin Park, has members under 30.

 

The annual list reverses the common perception of pop music. Not only is it not the province of youth; it's also not the province of CD sales, hit songs and smutty videos.

 

While sexy young stars take their turn strutting on the Billboard charts or MTV -- or on the cover of Rolling Stone -- the real pop pantheon, it seems, is an older group, no longer producing new hits, but re-enacting songs that are older than many of today's pop idols.

 

In other words, pop music may seem to be about Gwen Stefani, Ashlee Simpson and Ashanti, but its bottom line is about Celine Dion (No. 21 on the list), Bette Midler (No. 24) and Cher (No. 43).

 

Consider the singer Usher, 26. He sold the most albums, flashed the hottest abs and caused the most swoons in 2004. But Usher ranked only No. 16 -- well below the rumpled Phil Collins, 54, who ranked No. 8. Jimmy Buffett, 59, who keeps his abs comfortable and safe behind Hawaiian shirts, who ranked No. 5.

 

Collins and Buffett, like fellow rock plutocrats Elton John, No. 4, Simon and Garfunkel, No. 10, and Sting, No. 15, are all of an age when hair is no longer a statement. It is a losing battle.

 

This is not the revolution the industry was built to promote.

 

Even at the top of the list, Prince and Madonna, two 46-year-olds, each of whom earned over $50 million in 2004, have long since stopped driving fans into music stores.

 

"This always comes as a shock to fans," said Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor at Rolling Stone. "The biggest-selling artists aren't the ones who make the most money. The artists learn the hard way that money comes from concert tickets and T-shirts, not selling records. That's the lesson -- you build a brand over time, and you can sell the brand even if you can't sell the albums."

 

This means that, while it is good to be the next big thing, it is better to be a-couple-of-big-things-ago. Though pop music glorifies the young and the new, it actually sells these qualities at a discount.

 

For the record companies, which rarely share in concert grosses, this formula conveys a simple lesson, said Fred Goodman, author of "The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce."

 

"It tells you that the record business stinks," Goodman said. Though record companies still create hit acts, often at great expense, "the consumer money is not in the record marketplace," he said.

 

If old songs create more profits than new ones, in a business that claims to sell newness as hipness, then the business is at odds with itself.

 

That may be true for the record companies, but Tom Calderone, executive vice president of music and talent programming for MTV and MTV2, suggested that musicians aren't just creating new songs. They're creating future old songs. That flamboyant mane of today is really a down payment on a profitable bald pate tomorrow. And obsolescence, after all, is in the ear of the ticket buyer.