Pick a Day

Music History Events: Lotsa Money

October 10, 1999 Las Vegas' Grand Hotel holds an auction of several hundred thousand dollars' worth of Elvis memorabilia, including the King's wristwatch, cigar box, and his 1956 Lincoln Continental.

September 21, 1998 Madonna enrolls her daughter, Lourdes Ciccone, at the prestigious Cheltenham Ladies College in England. Tuition at the boarding school is $22,650 a year.

December 1, 1995 An auction of his memorabilia nets Frank Sinatra over two million dollars.

September 14, 1995 Paul McCartney's handwritten lyrics for The Beatles' "Getting Better" fetch $249,000 at Sotheby's in London.

August 26, 1993 Apple Records wins the bidding for a rare recording of the Beatles playing "Kansas City" and "Some Other Guy" at the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1962, paying £16,000 for the acetate disc.

November 4, 1992 Elton John and Bernie Taupin sign a $39 million songwriting deal with publishing giant Warner/Chappell, the largest such deal up to that time.

August 27, 1992 John Lennon's original written lyrics for "A Day In The Life" fetch $87,000 at a Sotheby's auction.

June 29, 1985 New York's Cooper-Hewitt museum fetches a record $2,299,000 for John Lennon's "Roller," a 1965 Rolls Royce Phantom V painted groovy psychedelic colors by Apple associates The Fool.

February 7, 1969 Tom Jones' UK variety show This Is Tom Jones premieres on ABC after the network pays out over $20 million for the rights.

January 4, 1965 Leo Fender sells Fender Guitars to CBS for $13 million.

September 18, 1960 Teen idol Frankie Avalon turns 21, making him an adult and therefore eligible to claim the over $600,000 he earned while underage.

July 7, 2022 The only copy of Bob Dylan's newly recorded "Blowin' In The Wind" sells at auction for £1,482,000 ($1.7 million). Dylan recorded it with producer T Bone Burnett and the song was pressed to a disc in Burnett's new format, Ionic Original, which is made of aluminium but plays on a turntable.

December 28, 2021 Dr. Dre's divorce is settled, with the rapper/producer agreeing to pay his ex wife, Nicole Plotzker-Young, $100 million. They were married from 1996-2020.

August 4, 2021 Forbes declares Rihanna the richest female musician - by far. Her $1.7 billion fortune is roughly double that of Madonna, who is #2 on the list. Most of Rihanna's earnings are from her Fenty Beauty line.

June 14, 2020 BTS draw about 750,000 viewers (in 107 countries) to their Bang Bang Con livestream concert, earning an estimated $20 million in ticket sales, far more than what a traditional concert could earn. It proves that livestream shows, which have mostly relied on donations, can be immensely profitable as ticketed events.

October 26, 2019 The beat-up sweater Kurt Cobain wore on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged special sells at auction for $334,000. After Cobain died, Courtney Love gave it to the family's nanny, who sold it to pay for cancer treatments.

August 2, 2019 With a show in Hannover, Germany on the 246th date of his ÷ (Divide) tour, Ed Sheeran breaks the record for highest-grossing tour, surpassing the $735.3 million U2 earned on their 2009-2011 360 tour (they did it in just 110 shows). Sheeran finishes the tour August 26 with a final tally of $775.6 million.

March 14, 2019 George Michael's art collection is auctioned at Christie's in London, raising about $12 million to continue his charity work.

October 13, 2017 Dolly Parton donates $1 million to the Vanderbilt University Children's Hospital in Nashville, which helped her niece battle leukemia. She announces the donation on a visit to the facility, where she performs songs from her children's album I Believe in You.

August 4, 2016 Nationwide insurance announces a new ad campaign with Brad Paisley and Rachel Platten.More

March 14, 2016 Sony pays $750 million to Michael Jackson's estate for the King of Pop's half of Sony/ATV Music, a publishing company that owns the rights to some 4,000 pop songs, including 250 Lennon-McCartney tunes from the Beatles catalog. Jackson bought ATV Music in 1985 for $47.5 million and merged with Sony a decade later. Jackson's estate retains the rights to songs written by Jackson.

December 10, 2015 Janis Joplin's psychedelic-painted Porsche sells for $1.76 million at auction.More

June 24, 2014 A copy of Caustic Window, an album by Richard James (aka Aphex Twin) that was abandoned after test-pressing allegedly only five copies, sells for $46,300 on eBay. The winner is Markus Persson, creator of video game Minecraft.

January 12, 2013 The 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow used by Freddie Mercury until his death in November 1991 is sold at an auction for £74,000 to a Russian businessman. It comes with a box of Kleenex Mansize tissues left in the car by the Queen frontman.

July 30, 2011 U2 wrap up their 360 tour at Moncton, Canada. The final gross for the tour is $735 million, breaking the record set by The Rolling Stones on their A Bigger Bang tour, which ran from 2005-2007. Ed Sheeran sets a new mark in 2019 with $775 million on his ÷ (Divide) tour, but it takes him 255 shows to do it - U2s tour ran for 110 dates.

March 11, 2008 Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's newborn twins, Maximilian David and Emme Maribel, make their public debut in People. With a $6 million price tag, the exclusive photo is the most expensive celebrity picture ever taken at the time.

May 7, 2007 Sammy Hagar sells an 80% stake in his Cabo Wabo tequila company to Gruppo Campari for $80 million.More

March 30, 2007 Jay-Z sells his clothing company, Rocawear, to Iconix for $204 million.

April 15, 2006 Elton John cleans out his closet and raises over $700,000 for his AIDS Foundation when he sells over 10,000 articles of clothing in his Elton's Closet sale in New York.

May 25, 2000 Alanis Morissette files with the SEC to sell about $1 million worth of her MP3.com stock, which she accumulated in a partnership with the company. The shares were worth about 10 times as much a year earlier, not long after Morissette signed on.