Swift, 26, smashed the Rolling Stones' North American touring
record, pulling in a total of more than $200 million on the
North American portion of her "1989" world tour. Last year, the
"Bad Blood" singer came in second to Katy Perry with an
estimated $80 million.
Swift was honored with the first-ever "Taylor Swift Award" at
the BMI Pop Awards in May, quipping that she "would be kind of
bummed" if the award had gone to someone else.
British "Hello" singer Adele, 28, ranked second on Forbes' list
with $80.5 million in earnings, her highest total yet. Adele,
whose album "25" swiftly became the biggest seller of 2015,
enjoyed continued success with album sales this year and grossed
millions per night for her arena shows.
Madonna, who was named the highest-paid woman in music in 2013,
ranked third this year. Her recent "Rebel Heart" tour grossed
$170 million, bringing her career total on the road to $1.4
billion pretax, according to the magazine.
In the past 12 months, Madonna, 58, earned a total of $76.5
million. That was slightly more than Barbados-born Rihanna, who
earned $75 million and also received a lifetime achievement
award at the MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 28.
"Lemonade" artist Beyonce, who was 2014's top earner, ranked
fifth at $54 million.
Collectively, the 10 women on Forbes' list earned more than $600
million this year.
Forbes compiled the list after estimating pretax income for the
12 months from June 2015 to 2016 based on interviews with
managers, agents, lawyers and some of the stars. It also looked
at data from the Pollstar, the Recording Industry Association of
America and tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan.
(Reporting by Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by Matthew
Lewis)
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