How Much Beyonce And Jay-Z Are Really Worth
It's hard to comprehend just how much money Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and her hubby, Jay-Z, actually have. Who would spend nearly $11,000 on a dress for their toddler daughter? Or stage this ridiculously elaborate pregnancy Instagram post? Only the kind of people worth an estimated $1.25 billion. In other words, the two celebs are worth more than twice as much as the Queen of England. Honestly, it doesn't even seem like there's enough time in the day to make that kind of cash.
In 2017, Forbes named Bey the highest-paid woman in the music industry. The singer is worth an estimated $355 million on her own, making her one of Forbes' richest self-made women. And that's before adding in Shawn Carter's $930 million net worth. But how do these stars make all that cash? It certainly isn't only from album sales. Both celebs have clothing and perfume lines and liquor companies and have undertaken massive tech endeavors, which bring them a massive chunk of change. It almost makes Jay's $1.5 million sale of his little piece of the Barclay's Center look like trading baseball cards on the playground.
Riding in style
You won't catch Jay-Z dropping daughter Blue Ivy off for ballet class in a Honda Odyssey. Though he's been known to occasionally hop on the subway, the hip hop mogul has some pretty nice toys. According to Page Six, the star dropped a whopping $8 million on a Maybach Exelero. But he doesn't limit himself to just fancy cars. The royal family of rap reportedly has a $40 million private plane, and the Carters have also been spotted cruising on a $50 million yacht to celebrate Beyoncé's 32nd birthday.
Riding around in style is one thing, but Beyoncé and Jay-Z also have some pretty impressive real estate holdings. According to E! News, the pair owns a $135 million Bel Air compound. You heard that right: compound. It's complete with four pools, eight bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a 15-car garage, a spa, a fitness center, and a literal helipad. E! News reported that Bey and Jay also own a $26 million, 12,000 square-foot mansion in the Hamptons that comes with a 1,800 square-foot guest house.
Album sales aren't paying The Carters' automo-bills
According to Billboard (via E! News), Beyoncé's album sales were reportedly just 6.9 percent of her total earnings in 2016 — but boy was that tiny percentage gigantic. That year, the former Destiny's Child member dropped the album Lemonade, which became the third best-selling album in the U.S. behind Adele's 25 and Drake's Views, as reported by Billboard. The album was said to have sold almost 2.2 million units. Between Lemonade's success and royalties from her previous works (as both a solo artist and a member of Destiny's Child), the star pulled in $4.3 million.
Jay-Z, on the other hand, didn't make as much as his wife from album sales during the release of 4:44, but he sold a million copies before his 13th studio album was even released in 2017. According to E! News, Sprint purchased a million copies in advance to give as free downloads to Tidal subscribers. He managed to sell an additional 262,000 album-equivalent units which shot his efforts to the top of the Billboard 200, but he only brought in $3 million that year from all of his royalties combined. This was reportedly just 1.5 percent of his overall 2017 paycheck.
Tidal's worth skyrocketed tenfold since Jay-Z dove in
In 2015, Jay-Z purchased Tidal's parent company for $56 million in effort to capitalize on the ever-changing music industry. According to The New York Times, the streaming service was a sort of underdog compared to Spotify, Rhapsody, and YouTube. A year prior, Apple began their pivot towards streaming and purchased Beats Music (which was ultimately shuttered in favor of Apple Music) as part of a $3 billion deal. Basically, Jay got in early, and it paid off.
It's undeniable that the Carters helped raise Tidal's profile, along with a number of A-listers like Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, and Kanye West, who all own a stake in the company. It didn't take long for its value to skyrocket. Even though its user base remains relatively small compared to frontrunners like Spotify and Apple, Forbes reported that Tidal's worth skyrocketed to around $600 million by 2018. Talk about a return on investment! In 2017, Jay-Z pulled in a whopping $200 million after he sold a 33 percent stake in the company to Sprint, as reported by the BBC.
People went 'apes**t' for On The Run II
The only thing better than a Carter alone is when the Carters team up. Beyoncé and Jay-Z pulled in an enormous amount of money from their joint On The Run tour series. According to Billboard, the pair first embarked on a 21-date run in 2014. It "grossed $109.6 million from 980,000 tickets sold." But this is one of the rare cases where the sequel is actually better than the original.
In June 2018, the Carters embarked on On The Run II to promote their collaborative album Everything Is Love, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 later that month. It exceeded expectations and more than doubled the couple's profits from the previous incarnation. With support from DJ Khaled and Chloe x Halle, the tour raked in a whopping $253.5 million from more that 2.17 million tickets sold. It was twice as long as the original On The Run and featured 48 shows spanning North America and Europe.
Bey is the concert breadwinner
The Carters may make an excellent team, but Beyoncé is the clear breadwinner when it comes to ticket sales. According to E! News, her Formation tour in 2016 pulled in an estimated $250 million. She personally walked away with $54.7 million worth of the pie. Alternatively, Jay-Z's 4:44 tour grossed $48.7 million in 2017, and he personally only profited an estimated $14 million. Tell us again, who run the world?
Though the Formation tour is a thing of the past, Bey still claims high performance fees for her solo concerts. Business Insider estimated that the "Single Ladies" singer got around $3 million for her 2018 headlining set at Coachella. In 2016, E! News estimated that touring accounted for 88 percent of the star's annual earnings. The artist also occasionally acts. She's landed roles in flicks like Dreamgirls and 2013's animated Epic. She also signed on as the voice of Nala for Disney's live-action remake of The Lion King by November 2017. There's no word on just how much the star will pull in from her role, but The Hollywood Reporter claimed Emma Watson, who starred in the remake of Beauty and the Beast, pulled in around $15 million. We'd guess that Bey, who's playing a key supporting character rather than the star, will likely get a little less.
Roc Nation has nearly $1 billion in management contracts
A year after Jay-Z stepped down from his role at Def Jam, where he signed a $10 million contract in 2004, according to E! News, the rap mogul launched Roc Nation. Since 2008, the full-service entertainment company has been acting as a "talent agency, music publishing house and a touring and concert production company" (via E! News) for a litany of impressive A-listers like Shakira and DJ Khaled. Though Jay signed a ten-year, $200 million deal with Live Nation (via Forbes), who co-owns Roc Nation, the artist isn't banking on the music industry, where record labels are struggling to monetize physical releases, as reported by Rolling Stone. His brand's most lucrative arm might just be Roc Nation Sports, which was founded in 2013.
According to Forbes, the company manages $934.7 million in contracts for a number of athletes including NFL running backs and MLB pitchers. In 2018, Roc Nation Sports reportedly brought in $28.9 million in commissions, which helped land Jay the No. 21 spot on Forbes' list of top agents. According to E! News, the rapper's work with Roc Nation allegedly makes up the largest chunk of his income.
That endorsement will cost you about $50 million
The Carters were influencers long before people were hawking diet teas on Instagram. According to Elle, a single post on Beyoncé's ultra-lux account is valued at $1 million. At one point, she even held the record for the most-liked photo on the social network. Instead of cheap teeth-whitening and weight loss products, Bey obviously goes for the gold. Fortune reported that she inked a $50 million deal with Pepsi in 2012, though she's worked with the company since 2002. The singer also had sponsorships with Nintendo DS, L'Oreal, and American Express.
What's unusual for a woman in the music industry is the fact that Beyoncé can't really attribute her success to anyone but herself. After firing her father some years ago, the artist has been managing herself under her own entertainment company, Parkwood Entertainment.
"I felt like I wanted to follow the footsteps of Madonna and be a powerhouse and have my own empire and show other women when you get to this point in your career you don't have to go sign with someone else and share your money and your success — you do it yourself," she said during a 2013 screening of her self-titled visual album (via Billboard).
Like Beyoncé, Jay-Z also has a number of endorsement deals. According to International Business Times, he's worked with brands like Armadale Vodka and Hewlett Packard.
Retail it to the top
Retail is a huge market for both Beyoncé and Jay-Z. The latter co-founded Rocawear in the late '90s and sold the rights to his brand almost a decade later for $200 million, as noted by E! News. In 2003, he had a landmark Reebok collab, which according to Complex, "changed the sneaker industry forever" when his first pair of kicks sold 10,000 units at about $150 each an hour after they hit shelves (via the New York Post). The rapper also had "high-end clothing capsule collections" at Barneys in 2013 and 2017.
Years after Jay sold Rocawear, Beyoncé embarked on her own retail journey. In 2014, the singer started developing an athleisure line with Topshop billionaire Philip Green, launching their first products at the British retailer in 2016 (via Elle). According to Mashable, Ivy Park was the most popular fashion brand on Instagram before it even hit stores and sold out almost instantly upon release (via Time).
Today, Ivy Park remains a brand filled with controversy. Beyoncé came under fire after a report by The Sun (via Business Insider) accused the clothing line of paying its Sri Lankan factory workers as little as $6.20 a day. In 2018, she took full ownership of the brand after sexual harassment allegations were leveled against Green."
How much is the bar tab?
Jay-Z has no qualms about spending epic proportions on a night out — and here the rest of us are worried about accidentally leaving our tabs open. According to Page Six, the rapper racked up a $91,135 bar tab in 2018 at a nightclub called Playroom after reportedly ordering 40 bottles of Armand de Brignac champagne. For Jay, this very well could be a tax write-off. The music mogul has a hand in the business of alcohol and nightlife.
Jay has long-owned the 40/40 club, a celebrity-favored haunt in New York that reportedly brings in annual profits of $10 million. According to Forbes, the club's "central feature" is a $1 million champagne tower comprised of golden Armand de Brignac bottles. Jay also owns the champagne brand, colloquially referred to as Ace of Spades, which has bottles that retail for as much as $850 a pop. Though Armand de Brignac keeps their sales figures under wraps, they reportedly make 100,000 bottles a year.
If you didn't know from the sheer amount of times Jay-Z and his friends rapped about d'Usse in recent years, Hov also own the Bacardi cognac brand (via Billboard) which launched in 2012. Though it's unclear how much the music mogul makes from the deal, cognac sales are reportedly surging in the U.S., and Bacardi made 86,000 cases in 2016 alone. This was a 48 percent increase from the previous year.
Jay-Z is all for Ubering in the sky
Jay-Z didn't just get his $900 million net worth rapping. For someone with so many jobs, he's had a crazy amount of retirements. The one job that always seemed to stick was tech investing. After a series of successful investments, the star created his own venture capital firm called Marcy Venture Partners alongside Roc Nation president Jay Brown and Larry Marcus, a "Silicon Valley venture capitalist" who'd previously invested in Pandora and SoundHound, according to Axios.
Jay-Z has always blurred the line between the music industry and tech world. His dealings with Roc Nation's startup platform prove it, but he's also made some key investments in the world of transportation. According to TechCrunch, Jay invested in Uber in 2011 when the ride-sharing app was worth just $300 million. Today, it's valued at $62.5 billion, likely leaving him with a huge return.
Not all of Jay's tech investments have been fruitful. In 2012, the star backed private jet startup Blackjet, which eventually went bust. In 2018, he set his sights on the world of luxury air travel once again when he invested in JetSmarter, which is largely considered the Uber of private jets. According to TechCrunch, the company is valued at $1.5 billion.
No one does a celebrity perfume like Beyonce
Maybe she's drunk in love, or maybe she's just inhaled a little too much perfume. A strong scent is enough to make anyone a little light-headed, much like we'd feel if we stared at Beyoncé's perfume sales figures. Though sales of celebrity scents have reportedly dropped by half since 2000 (via The Washington Post), Mrs. Carter sold $400 million worth of fragrances, according to WWD (via Fashionista). The last-reported figures are from 2013, so who knows how much more she's actually made?
Bey broke Macy's sales records with her fragrance line Heat. Though she's seen a number of releases including Pulse and Rise, the very first scent made $75,000 in a single day. According to People StyleWatch (via New York Daily News), it brought in $3 million during the first month in a time when celebrity fragrances typically garnered just $2.5 million a year. But the "Crazy In Love" singer was already a perfume pro by the time she launched her first scent.
In 2004, Beyoncé teamed up with Tommy Hilfiger to create True Star. According to People, the brand gave her a whopping $250,000 in exchange for her endorsement and ten days of her time. Not bad for just over a week of work.
They rented out the Louvre
If you didn't know that the Carters were worth more than a billion dollars, the fact that they're the kind of couple who can rent out the Louvre on a whim might tip you off (via Fader). The pair stunned viewers when they released the single to their first collaborative album, Everything Is Love, and seemingly rented out the entire Parisian museum. Though the Louvre didn't comment on how much it actually cost to rent the place out (via Vulture), brushing elbows with the Mona Lisa isn't typically very cheap, but it's probably still pennies for the king and queen of hip hop.
According to The New York Times, about 500 shoots take place at the Louvre every year. The galleries reportedly cost 15,000 euros (about $17,500) to use for a full day's shoot, but Beyoncé and Jay-Z shot interior and exterior shots. We're also guessing they didn't want visitors and might have rented out the whole thing or filmed on a day when it wasn't open to the public. Newsweek reported that renting out the reception hall beneath the Glass Pyramid costs $36,000 alone. That's basically just a few of Blue Ivy's dresses. No biggie!