Forbes has just released its rankings of the seven highest earning DJs in 2016. But how do those earnings compare to their overall singles sales for the same period?
The substantial earnings made by the likes of Calvin Harris, Tiesto and David Guetta from the period June 2015 to June 2016 make for head spinning reading, as you'll see below. Forbes' pre-tax figures take into account not just music related earnings, but everything from endorsements and merch to outside business ventures.
Topping the DJ rich list is Calvin Harris ($63m), followed in second and third place by Tiesto ($38m) and David Guetta ($28m) respectively. The fourth biggest earner is Zedd ($24.5m), with Steve Aoki ($23.5m) following in fifth place. Diplo ($23m) is the year’s sixth biggest earner, with Skrillex ($20m) propping up the chart.
As mentioned above, Forbes’ earning take into account all possible revenue streams for each DJ in its estimations. Below, however, we’ve crunched the Official Charts Company's figures and boiled them down to a purely sales driven chart, based solely on singles sales for the same period. Our figures include any track that the artist has appeared on or collaborated on during that time.
Unsurprisingly, Calvin Harris comes out on top once again, scoring total singles sales of over 2.85m. Tiesto, however, who registered as the world’s second highest earning DJ, lags way behind in the sales stakes, notching up just shy of 600,000 sales for the period. The second biggest seller is David Guetta with sales of over 1.9m, while Diplo comes in at No.3 here with sales of more than 1.4m.
You can see our ranking of the top selling DJs for 2016 below.
1. Calvin Harris - 2.8m
2. David Guetta - 1,9m
3. Diplo - 1,4m
4 Skrillex - 1.3m
5. Tiesto - 582,539
6. Zedd - 443,703
7. Steve Aoki – 155,000
