Tina Turner’s music generates millions of dollars annually through streams, syncs, sales and streaming activity.
Turner died on May 24 at the age of 83 after battling an illness. Throughout her career, she amassed an estimated net worth of $250 million and a string of hit songs that span decades.
But the revenue Turner’s music rakes in reportedly won’t go to her estate.
Catalog Sale
As Finurah previously reported, Turner sold her entire music catalog to German music company BMG in October 2021 for a reported $50 million. BMG also will control any NIL (name, image, likeness) deals.
Millions in Music
According to Billboard, Turner’s music generates $3.7 million annually.
Billboard estimates that a significant portion of that money, about $2 million, comes from streams outside the U.S., and less than $1 million, or $920,000, comes from the U.S., making the rock and roll legend more of an international star than a domestic one.
Turner’s catalog generates about $700,000 a year in synch revenues.
Warner Music Group is responsible for the distribution of most of the music, with all royalties going to BMG.
Turner reportedly sold more than 100 million records throughout her recording career, including her time singing with her late husband, Ike Turner, whom she met in 1956 in East St. Louis, Illinois. While the Ike & Tina Turner Revue was successful, it wasn’t until Turner broke away from her troubled marriage that she became a superstar.
In 1976, Turner left Ike and filed for divorce.
After years of struggling following the divorce, she aaw a restart to her career with the multiplatinum album “Private Dancer” in 1984.
The album produced the hit single “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” It is one of her three classic hits and marked a pivotal change in the music industry as a whole as its music video helped encapsulate the MTV era, a period from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s.
Turner, already in her 40s, stood among her younger peers such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses and Bon Jovi as a cultural icon of the ’80s and ’90s. Her music inspired both older and younger generations.
She did not retire from music until 2009, at the age of 69, ending her legendary music career with a farewell tour, the “Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour,” and securing two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, one with Ike for Ike & Tina Turner Revue and one as a solo act.
The tour was a huge success, grossing more than $130 million.
She later won a lifetime achievement award during the 2018 Grammy Awards, and had a musical production named after her: “Tina.”
