4 Van Halen
$20,184,709.91
Its tour may have ended sooner than expected, with 32 of its shows ultimately canceled due to “exhaustion,” but Van Halen nevertheless kicked a little tail on the road in 2012. Van Halen toured in support of A Different Kind of Truth, its first album with David Lee Roth since 1984. More than a half-million fans turned out, and the tour grossed $54 million from just 46 shows, with accompanying merch sales said to be huge. Driven by the album’s reception, Van Halen moved 621,614 physical units and 213,524 digital albums in the United States, spiking non-touring earnings of an estimated $1.2 million for the band. The popularity of Van Halen’s classic catalog‹and the group’s willingness to tap into its older musical legacy‹is evidenced by an estimated $2.2 million in synch royalties.

.VAN HALEN, RUSH, JOURNEY Make BILLBOARD’s ‘Music’s Top 40 Money Makers’ List – Feb. 22, 2013

VAN HALEN, RUSH and JOURNEY have made Billboard magazine’s “Music’s Top 40 Money Makers” list, compiled by measuring touring revenue, music sales, publishing royalties and other streaming and on-demand figures.

VAN HALEN hit #4 with $20.2 million, thanks to a tour gross of $54 million from just 46 shows. The band’s first album with singer David Lee Roth since “1984″, “A Different Kind Of Truth”, registered 620,000 in physical album sales in 2012 and more than 213,000 in digital sales.

“When it comes to making the biggest score, the most money always comes from high-paying live performances,” Billboard’s editorial analyst Glenn Peoples wrote in explaining the list.

“Ironically, the most popular touring artists are usually well past their peaks on the album sales charts.”

Billboard said streaming music online to paying customers has not caught on with older generations and was small in percentage terms but growing. “Yet even in the coming years, as streaming services become a more important revenue source, possibly replacing digital downloads and CD sales, one thing is unlikely to change: concerts will have the greatest influence of top earners’ overall earnings,” said Peoples.

#4 – VAN HALEN
$20,184,709.91

#22 – TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA
$9,959,362.28

#28 – RUSH
$8,719,834.30

#35 – JOURNEY
$6,983,106.58

See the entire list at this location.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/list/1549704/musics-top-40-money-makers-2013

FWIW, if folks read the Billboard article carefully, they’ll see that the 620k total actually refers to ALL VH CATALOG sales and not the sales for ATKOT.

Blabbermouth screwed up.

Ok, that makes sense. I was wondering if that was the case, then why hasn’t ADKOT been certified gold yet.

Dave:
Ok, that makes sense. I was wondering if that was the case, then why hasn’t ADKOT been certified gold yet.

Keep in mind that it’s the record companies that pay to have a release certified. So even if something sells X million copies, until the record company ponies up $$$ (usually for publicity purposes), it won’t be certified anything.