Billboard Magazine's Top Moneymaker for 2012 

#1 - Taylor Swift

2011 earnings   $35,719,902.00 !!

click here for the complete run down of top musical earners for the year.

 

After wrapping the final leg of her Fearless tour, Taylor Swift's blockbuster success two years ago left music industry observers wondering what she could possibly do for an encore. The pop-country superstar answered them with her smash Speak Now album and         accompanying tour, which jetted through Asia and Europe in         addition to making its way across North America. Grossing $88.5 million in the U.S. alone, the tour netted Swift a remarkable $29.8 million. Honored as Billboard's Woman of the Year in December, she racked up U.S. album sales of 1.8 million units last year-led by booming business for late 2010's Speak Now, which sold 967,000 units and digital single track sales of 7.8 million. Songwriting royalties         were another highly beneficial source of income, given that Swift wrote all 14 Speak Now tunes herself. -Billboard Magazine

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It was the Spring of 2006 and a 17 year old Taylor Swift made an appointment to come in my radio station and introduce herself to me.

I'll never forget how excited she was about what she was doing. She played a few of her songs and told me the story about how when she was MUCH YOUNGER, she convinved her parents to take her to Nashville to drop her tapesoff at record companies in hopes of being discovered.

If there is one thing Taylor has never lacked, it's enthusiasm.

Here's the picture she signed for my on thay day in 1996 and a copy of her first Bio from the back,

In the past 6 years, she sure has made a career for herself earning one of the biggest paychecks in the music biz all before she's even 23 years old! Go Taylor! - Michael J