Billboard calculated the incomes of the five highest-paid musicians in the world in 2020. Queen are on the top with $48.7 million of total income, followed by Taylor Swift with $41.4 million, Billie Eilish with $32.8 million, BTS with $31.5 million, and finally Post Malone with $29.7 million.
MBW goes into some fun music math regarding Queen: the British rock band generated £41.95 million ($58.1 million) in 12 months prior to September 2020, with royalties amounting to £41.67 million ($57.7 million). In FY2019 (the 12 months to the end of September 2019), Queen Productions Ltd generated £72.77 million ($100.8m), of which £71.53 million ($99m) was from royalties. On the other hand, Hipgnosis Songs Fund takes 18 multiple as a reasonable reflection of the market value of gold-standard music publishing rights today. In the past three years, according to Queen Productions Ltd, the band’s rights have generated some £134.5 million ($186 million) in royalties. That’s an average across these three years of $62 million per annum. So, an 18 multiple on $62 million would make Queen’s royalty-bearing rights worth - $1.1 billion today.
Queen have officially moved 10 million units in streaming and track sales of their anthem 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in the US, making them the first UK band to be RIAA-certified diamond, Blabbermouth reports. 'Bohemian Rhapsody' also recently became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, surpassing a collective 1.6 billion streams globally across all major streaming services.
“Borders are a dreadful invention of mankind, and so we are just putting up another one, and I think it’s a dreadful retrograde step” - Queen's drummer Roger Taylor said about consequences Brexit will have on UK touring bands, NME reports. His band is OK, he said - "we can fall back on our songwriting and our publishing", it's the road crew that are suffering - "it’s a daily, weekly job for them and so it’s made it really hard for our industry, very hard indeed”. Guardian reports about road crews for some of the biggest bands in music that are being forced into homelessness and turning to food banks to survive during the pandemic.
Queen have shared an image of the time their original lineup met Maradona backstage in his home country. A March 8, 1981 performance at José Amalfitani Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina saw the band draw a crowd of 300,000 people. Among them was a 21-year-old Maradona, who Queen sought to meet. Freddie Mercury invites Maradona onstage during Queen's performance to the crowd's delight: "Right now, I'd like do introduce a friend of yours — and ours — tonight. I'm sure you all know him". "I want to thank Freddie and Queen for making me so happy," Maradona said, ahead of leading bassist John Deacon into 'Another One Bites the Dust'.
Queen and Metallica earned more from album sales than anyone else last year, according to a brand new The Highest Paid Musicians of 2019 report. Queen topped the list for album sales with $9.6 million, thanks in part to a massive boost from the Academy Award-winning biopic 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Metallica arrived at No. 2 with an estimated $3.6M from album sales.
Queens are already there, but for the Queen it is a first one - the rock band are to feature on a series of UK postage stamps over the summer, Ultimate Classic Rock reports. The 13 stamp designs, going on sale from 9 July, feature a posed studio shot of the group, plus four live images of each of Brian May, Roger Taylor, frontman Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon, and album covers of 'Queen II', 'Sheer Heart Attack', 'A Night at the Opera', 'News of the World', 'The Game', 'Greatest Hits', 'The Works', and 'Innuendo'. They become only the third band to be honoured by Royal Mail, following the Beatles in 2007 and Pink Floyd in 2016. Drummer Roger Taylor said: “We must be really part of the furniture now”.
A big benefit concert Fire Fight Australia raised close to A$10 million ($6.7 million for fire relief, drawing a record 1.5 million viewers across its domestic broadcast partners. Dozens of local and international acts performed at the 10-hour concert, more than 70,000 people attended the concert to hear from artists like Queen, Alice Cooper, Olivia Newton-John, John Farnham, Jessica Mauboy, k.d. Lang, Peter Murray, Conrad Sewell and Daryl Braithwaite.
Queen have become the first band with an official U.K. coin - the commemorative coin is launched today, with Queens on both sides: her majesty Queen Elizabeth II on one face, and the band on the other. The coins' design features the instruments played by each founding member: Brian May’s Red Special guitar, John Deacon’s Fender Precision bass, Roger Taylor’s Ludwig bass drum decorated with the Queen crest, and Freddie Mercury’s Bechstein grand piano with the opening notes of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' pressed down. Prices range from £13 for the limited edition “brilliant uncirculated” coin, with the silver and a gold proof edition going for £2,100.
Queen and Adam Lambert, Alice Cooper, k.d. lang, Olivia Newton-John and John Farnham will play the Sydney’s ANZ Stadium for a massive bushfire relief concert, to be held February 16. All profits and contributions will go to Australian wildfires relief efforts. Also confirmed for the Fire Fight Australia concert are numerous homegrown artists.
"We still haven’t earned a penny from it ['Bohemian Rhapsody' movie]. Isn’t that funny? How successful does a movie have to be before you make money?” - Queen's Brian May told BBC. The movie made 900 million dollars, making it the highest-grossing musical biopic of all time. He says he did like the movie, and […]
Last year there were 16.8 million vinyl albums sold in USA, up 14.6 percent from 2017., marking the 13th consecutive year of growth for the format. 16.8 million is also a new yearly high for vinyl album sales since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991. Ten biggest selling vinyls were 'Guardians of the Galaxy' […]
