Highest-Paid Country Singers of 2017 Revealed
Collectively, the 11 artists on Forbes’ highest paid country artists list earned $366 million, but that’s actually down from last year. Who’s No. 1? Find out which artist topped $60 million last year!
Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean all return to the Forbes list one year after making a collective $393 million. Florida Georgia Line are on this list, and so is Blake Shelton, who is probably the only artist to make a hefty sum of his income from non-country pursuits. The paycheck he draws from The Voice on NBC pays him double-digit millions.
There's only one female on this of highest-paid country singers, which is pretty surprising, but maybe not when you consider how few women gain radio airplay and that Carrie Underwood (not listed) didn't tour heavily during the entirety of the last 12 months. Flip through the list to see who's No. 1, according to Forbes. Hint: We haven't mentioned his name yet.
Here's how Forbes comes to these rankings and figures, in their words:
In order to create our list of the world’s highest-paid country music acts, we evaluate touring numbers from Pollstar and record sales data from Nielsen while performing independent research on outside business ventures and endorsement deals. Our estimates represent pretax income from June 1, 2016 through June 1, 2017; fees for managers, agents and lawyers are not deducted.
This is actually the third straight year Garth Brooks has taken the honor of being Forbes' highest paid. In 2015 he raked in $90 million, followed by $70 million last year. Toby Keith was the last person not named Garth to come in on top, doing so in 2014.
Garth Brooks Gives a Fan His Guitar and He Freaks Out!