Music’s Top 10 Money Makers of 2009

They might have raked in the most dough in 2009 but are they necessarily the best acts out there right now?  Judge for your self and leave us your thoughts!

10) Metallica
$25,564,234

The band pulled in $22.8 million from 55 arena shows that drew more than 968,000 fansand sold 694,000 albums in 2009.

9)Kenny Chesney
$26,581,141

Kenny Chesney has sold more than 1 million tickets for seven consecutive years, with physical album sales in the United States running roughly the same as tickets sold.

8)Coldplay
$27,326,562

Coldplay earned $24.7 million touring behind its 2008 album, “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends,” which sold 495,000 copies in 2009. Overall, the group sold 852,000 albums in 2009.

7) Jonas Brothers
$33,596,576

Boy Band The Jonas Brothers racked up almost $1.3 million in CD royalties. The band’s world tour netted them $31.4 million and won the group the Eventful Fans’ Choice Award at the 2009 Billboard Touring Awards.

6) Pink
$36,347,658

With Pink’s release of “Funhouse,” just prior to 2009, her career got catapulted to new heights thanks in part to an international arena tour, which netted her $35 million.

5) Britney Spears
$38,885,267

Britney’s 2008 “Circus” CD shot atop the Billboard 200 in December of 2008, and the pop star’s success continued into 2009 with an arena tour that earned her $36.4 million and album sales that totaled 763,000 copies. Spears also sold 7.5 million downloads

4) AC/DC
$43,650,466

The overwhelming majority of AC/DC’s 2009 earnings came from touring international arenas and stadiums (it pulled in $41.4 million from concerts) , In total, the group sold 1.1 million albums in 2009.

3) Madonna
$47,237,774

Madonna toured under a long-term multirights Live Nation deal ( valued at $120 million), Although her 2009 CD sales were well off the pace of her peak hitmaking years, her branding, licensing and merch efforts are among the most diversified and lucrative in the music business.

2)Bruce Springsteen
$57,619,037

With high exposure from the Super Bowl halftime show, Kennedy Center Honors and his run-in with Ticketmaster , the Boss was a force at retail and on the digital sales front, with more than 2 million tracks downloaded.

1) U2
$108,601,283

U2 remains the biggest band in the world. Its 360° tour is the group’s first under a 12-year multirights deal with Live Nation The act’s current global stadium tour expenses ared said to be $750,000 — but those costs are well offset by the highest capacities ever from the band’s 360-degree configuration. U2 was the top revenue generator in music last year.

How were these numbers compiled?

In compiling these rankings, Billboard‘s editors used proprietary data from the Billboard Boxscore archives (concert grosses), Nielsen SoundScan (sales of physical albums, digital albums and digital tracks), Nielsen BDS (tethered downloads, on-demand streams and noninteractive streaming at Rhapsody, Napster, AOL and Yahoo) and Nielsen RingScan (master ringtone sales).It combines an artist’s estimated take from those products with box-office results from concert performances that took place during the calendar year.