HARD TIMES IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

It seems we've been wrong: all the time we believed that the RIAA and BPI were crying wolf when they said the music industry was in danger of collapse, and they were telling the truth: The Sunday Times' music rich list has been published and things are so bad in the music industry, this is the top five:

1. Robbie Williams - £126
2. Elton John - £74
3. Noel Gallagher - £5.78 and some Euros left over from a trip to Wales that it turned out he didn't need
4. That bloke with the guitar outside the co-op - 39p
5. Elaine Graham, from the CD counter at Basingstoke Asda - 10p

Oh, actually, we're wrong: Clive Calder is worth £1.3bn, money mainly made from selling Zomba to Sony-BMG. Then there's Macca, £800m; Andrew Lloyd-Webber, £700m; Cmaeron Mackintosh, £400m.

Going down is Simon Fuller, whose 19 company turned out to have been overvalued - the poor sod now has to try and put together his life with just £75m.

Interestingly, very few of the richest people in music actually make music. Indeed, in order to try and interest the general public, the Times has produced a "Young Music Millionaire" list which features names people have heard of - Joss Stone is worth five million; oddly, Daniel Bedingfield is on there (he's rich?) while so is Victoria Beckham (she's involved in music?).

music money paul mccartney