Bob Marley Would Be Highest Earning Music Legend On Social Media, UK Study Says
As physical sales become a fleeting memory, the power of DSP’s and social media grows more evident daily. From facilitating live streams (Verzuz) to defending artistic vision by retaining an albums’ song sequence, (Adele’s 30) today’s tools are as effective as they are edifying in democratizing and decoding the artist/audience binary.
UK financial product developers Money.co.uk recently put the platforms’ untapped functions to the test to determine which iconic star would be making the most from streaming and social today. Many such acts—including Prince, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix—are still household names, which prompted money.co.uk’s investigation across the likes of Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.
Analysing stars from Bob Dylan to Ray Charles, the study ran official accounts through specialist analysis tools to reveal the estimated earnings per musician. These were then calculated to determine the predicted earnings per star, revealing who would dominate the modern world of social and streaming.
The analysis ranked legendary reggae singer Bob Marley at the top, with his total earnings from Instagram, YouTube and Spotify coming to an annual income of over £1.2million (over $1.6million). Although the singer-songwriter’s heyday was a half-century ago, taking the world by storm in the 70’s with tracks like War, and No Woman No Cry, his music still has nine million Spotify streams every single month.
According to the study, Marley’s biggest income would come from Spotify, thanks to his 12,438,220 monthly streams generating nearly $695,500 each year. Marley’s enduring influence also continues through to social media, with over 6 million fans following his official Instagram account.
Not surprisingly, money.co.uk’s findings on the Gong are on par with leading global business studies. Marley, who has been featured on Forbes’ ‘Highest-Paid Dead Celebrity’ list 17 times since 2001 raked in a whopping US$16 million this year.
Money.co.uk’s methodology involved scraping over 50 articles listing the greatest musicians of all time to analyse which were mentioned most regularly. A shortlist was then compiled for further research.
Researchers pulled numbers from each star’s official accounts (Instagram, YouTube and Spotify) which were then put through HypeAuditor, Social Blade and other software to provide the estimated earnings. For any big name without a ‘blue tick’, a combination of fan accounts was used to represent their modern-day following.
Once the total earnings of each star were calculated, the team converted them from Great British Pounds into US Dollars and sorted them from highest to lowest.
James Andrews, personal finance advisor at money.co.uk, is among the experts whose curiosity sparked the study. Andrews, who’s also an editor at Mirror Online, Yahoo Finance UK and MSN Money, spoke briefly on unearthing the impressive sums using platforms that didn’t exist when most of the legends were alive.
“As discussions of who will be this year’s Christmas Number One start to heat up, we wanted to take a look back at the artists who paved the way for today’s stars and celebrate just how much of an influence they still have,” Andrews said.
The Senior Editor continued, “Given that most haven’t released a new track for decades, it’s a testament to the enduring power of their work to inspire and move people who weren’t born when they first stepped into a recording studio.”
King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, scored second place on money.co.uk.’s list, his annual earnings of $1,604,033 narrowly missing Marley’s total. British music maverick David Bowie placed third on the list of highest earners with more than £1 million (nearly $1.4million) of income, while Aretha Franklin (aka ‘the Queen of Soul’) capped the top ten as the highest earning female with estimated earnings of $740,121.