American Idol is entering its final season, but the stars it has minted in the past are burning bright as ever--and, lately, none more than Adam Lambert.
The Season 8 runner-up climbs to the top of our list for the first time, pulling in a career-high $10 million. Lambert's earnings were buoyed by cash accumulated while playing arena shows as the frontman of legendary glam rock band Queen.
“Adam used the launching pad of American Idol very well to have a successful recording career,” his co-manager Martin Kirkup told FORBES two years ago, before offering a spot-on prognostication: “I think the main part of his career still lies ahead of him.”
The same could be said for Carrie Underwood, the top earner in 2013 and 2014, who finishes second this year. She tallied $8 million thanks to a mix of recorded music and live shows. The country diva’s latest album, Storyteller, debuted at No. 2 on the charts this past fall with sales of over 150,000 units. She'll soon parlay that into more cash on the road: her Storyteller Tour kicks off at the end of January.
Chris Daughtry and his eponymous band round out the top three with earnings of $6 million. They may not be quite as well-known as some of the other names on this list, but they play more shows--91 during our scoring period, to be precise.
Idol will mint one last champion this May, but its impact will continue to be felt for years. The stars it has created aren't limited to season winners like Underwood and Clarkson, who earned $4 million in a "down" year (only three shows in our scoring period, still good enough to land in a tie for No. 5 on this list). Even those who exited in earlier rounds, like Daughtry and Jennifer Hudson (who fell just short of the cutoff for this list), have made mainstream splashes.
The show's position as a ratings juggernaut was once so solid that rival executives and industry observers dubbed it "the Death Star." Even as recently as last year, the latest in a steady decline from Idol's peak, it still ranked among
“I think it’s the gold standard,” said Harry Connick, Jr., one of the show’s current judges, in an interview with FORBES last year. “There’s probably a couple reasons. One, it’s been around the longest. Two, it’s the most streamlined of all these shows. I mean, there’s no gimmicks, there’s no teams. It’s just a bunch of people auditioning and the group gets smaller and smaller and smaller until eventually it’s one person who wins.”
But direct competition from shows such as The Voice--and, less directly, the music-focused likes of
When it comes to the earnings of Idol's contestants, we calculate our numbers with the help of data from Pollstar, the RIAA and music industry sources including teams of some of the artists themselves. These figures reflect pretax earnings in our June 2014 through June 2015 scoring period.
Even for the names at the bottom of our list, life is good--just ask Season 10 winner Scotty McCreery, who pulled in approximately $4 million to earn a fifth-place tie with Kelly Clarkson.
Said McCreery: "I’m doing a lot better than I was a few summers ago, living off the coin jar in my truck."
For more on the business of music, check out my Jay Z biography, Empire State of Mind, as well as Michael Jackson, Inc. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook and by subscribing to my quarterly newsletter.
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