{"id":2137000,"date":"2025-11-05T15:54:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T15:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2137000"},"modified":"2025-11-05T15:54:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T15:54:48","slug":"the-annual-highest-paid-dead-musicians-is-out-for-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-annual-highest-paid-dead-musicians-is-out-for-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"The annual highest-paid dead musicians is out for 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your career is die. Just ask Elvis Presley<\/a>. Once he kicked in August 1977, he went from Las Vegas has-been to one of the highest-earning celebrities on the planet.<\/p>\n

Forbes tracks this ghoulish sort of thing, releasing a list of highest-earning dead celebrities around Halloween. Here\u2019s what we learned in 2025.<\/a> All figures in US dollars for the past 12 months.<\/p>\n

1. Michael Jackson: $105 million. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Money is flooding in from music sales, streaming, a publishing sale, the musical based on his life, and a Cirque du Soleil show. He\u2019s finished on top of this Forbes list 13 of the last 16 years. The estimates are that the Jackson estate earned $3.5 billion during that period.<\/p>\n

2. Dr. Seuss: $85 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of books. There are also licensing deals and a Netflix partnership.<\/p>\n

3\/4. Richard Wright\/Syd Barrett: $81 million each<\/strong><\/p>\n

Syd left Pink Floyd in 1968 and died in 2006. Keyboardist Richard Wright died in 2008.<\/p>\n

5. Notorious B.I.G.: $80 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

Credit continuing merch sales and a publishing sale in March.<\/p>\n

6. Miles Davis: $21 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

The jazz great died of a stroke in 1991. In 2025, there was a publishing sale of 90% of his catalogue.<\/p>\n

7. Elvis Presley: $17 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Presley family owns just 15% of Elvis Presley Enterprises. That company operates Graceland, an adjacent shopping mall, all merch rights, and whatever is left of his publishing.<\/p>\n

8. Jimmy Buffet: $14 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

All that time in the sun resulted in fatal skin cancer, but Jimmy lives on through two trusts. Income is derived from the Margarita chain of restaurants, clothing, and a cruise line, as well as legacy income from his music.<\/p>\n

9. Bob Marley: $13 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

Given the continued ubiquity of Marley\u2019s music along with all the merch and licensing, you\u2019d think this number would be higher. However, recent deals should juice this number in 2026.<\/p>\n

10. John Lennon: $12 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lennon has been a reliable earner since he was shot in December 1980. With more Beatles projects imminent and in development, this number should be higher in 2026.<\/p>\n

11. Prince: $11 million<\/strong><\/p>\n

He should be earning more, but there\u2019s so much confusion over his estate that it\u2019ll take a while to maximize returns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your career is die. Just ask Elvis Presley. Once he kicked in August 1977, he went from Las Vegas has-been to one of the highest-earning celebrities on the planet. Forbes tracks this ghoulish sort of thing, releasing a list of highest-earning dead celebrities around Halloween. Here\u2019s what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2137001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[390210,407180,364292],"class_list":["post-2137000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-dead-celebrities","tag-dead-musicians","tag-forbes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-annual-highest-paid-dead-musicians-is-out-for-2025.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2137002,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137000\/revisions\/2137002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2137001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}