Friday, April 27, 2007

Macca "might need second job soon"

The Sunday Times has done one of its regular rich lists where - through a mixture of inspired guesswork and watching what various people buy a Waitrose - they calculate what the great, the good, and the famous are worth. This time round, the focus of the pre-publicity is on the music millionaires.

The richest person in the UK music industry turns out, slightly disappointingly, to be Clive Calder (£1.3bn), although since he flogged Zomba five years ago and lives, for tax purposes, in the Cayman Islands, we're not sure he quite counts on either UK or music industry scores.

Which makes the richest person in music Andrew Lloyd Webber (£750m) - who has benefited both from the bounce of The Sound of Music and from a marking down of Paul McCartney (£725m). Macca has dropped to third place, but they seem to have already subtracted the cost of divorcing the Second Mrs McCartney.

The Rolling Stones, if you add all their wealth together, are worth £570m - getting dangerously close to being overhauled by U2, worth £480m in total.

What's really sweet is the paper adds together Madonna and Guy Ritchie's wealth - although presumably they rounded Guy's up to a full pound.

The top ten in full, then:

1 Clive Calder £1.3bn
2 Andrew Lloyd Webber £750m
3 Sir Paul McCartney £725m
4= Simon Fuller £450m
4= Sir Cameron Mackintosh £450m
6 Madonna & Guy Ritchie £275m
7 Sir Elton John £225m
8 Sir Mick Jagger £215m
9 Robert Stigwood £212m
10=Sir Tom Jones £190m
10=Keith Richards £190m
12 Sting £185m
13 Jamie Palumbo £165m
14= Roger Ames £160m
14= Olivia and Dhani Harrison £160m
16 Sir Tim Rice £155m
17= Eric Clapton £140m
17= Ringo Starr £140m
19 Phil Collins £135m
20= David Bowie £120m
20= Barry and Robin Gibb £120m

There's a separate list of "young" rich musicians, although the definition of young seems to be a little stretchy:

1 Vanessa-Mae Nicholson £32m
2= Guy Berryman £30m
2= Jonny Buckland £30m
2=Will Champion £30m
2= Chris Martin £30m
6 James Blunt £18m
7= Charlotte Church and Gavin Henson £10m
7= Joss Stone £10m
9= Craig David £9m
9= Will Young £9m

Vanessa Mae is thirty next year, which hardly makes her young in our book - if we were organising this list, we'd use the criteria of "would they look avoid looking silly if they wore trainers with wheels in?" - but the real surprise is Craig David being worth so much - we can only conclude he's had a couple of lucky scratchcards.


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

James Blunt = £18m??? One hit song and now he's minted. Wtf? This never happened to Chumbawamba!

DJ Samba said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DJ Samba said...

My favourite young musician is Gavin Henson. I can certainly say I prefer his music to pretty much everyone on that list.

I want 1.3bn. :(
--
http://52albums.blogspot.com

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

I suspect that Blunt's money comes from the never-ending use of You're Beautiful on soundtracks. I've often wondered how much NWA make from Homes Under The Hammer's use of Express Yourself three or four times a morning.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

DJ - Gavin Henson keeps Charlotte busy and out the recording studio. I think that's a duty in name of music...

James said...

Maybe Craig David gets a cut of Avid Merrion's income, what with 75% of Merrion's act being based on him?

Anonymous said...

£1.3bn - £190m = £1.11bn (approx.)... yeah that's about right.... expenditure over the years being what it was... i think it's amazing to think that keef would top the list without the drugs!

Mikey said...

Keith's dealer should be on the list too: His principal income is ultimately derived from record sales & one might hope that he's invested some of that £190m and not blown it all on decorating his crack den with a Scarface aesthetic.

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