Diddy leads the pack with an estimated fortune of $700
million, an increase of $120 million over his net worth last year. The change
comes largely from the addition of Revolt TV—the new, music-focused,
multi-platform channel of which he’s the majority owner—to his already-hefty
portfolio.
“Right now my focus is Revolt and making it the number one,
most-trusted, most credible worldwide brand for music,” he told FORBES in a
recent interview. “And to get Revolt to
be the quintessential definition of real time. I think that’s the future.”
Diddy has plenty of competition in the race to $1 billion.
His top challengers are Dr. Dre, who ranks second with $550 million, and Jay Z,
in third place with an estimated $520 million. The former leapfrogged the
latter on this year’s Forbes Five thanks to a large stake in Beats By Dr. Dre,
which he cofounded with Interscope chief Jimmy Iovine in 2008.
The company controls an astounding two-thirds of the premium
headphone market, with annual sales reportedly in excess of $1 billion and
growing. Private equity firm Carlyle invested $500 million for a minority stake
last year, pushing Beats’ value past $1 billion and likely closer to $2
billion.
“Beats has a unique brand—it speaks to a nice young
demographic, which is really interesting to marketers,” says Peter Csathy,
former president of Musicmatch, an early digital music purveyor acquired by
Yahoo YHOO +6.26% in 2004 for $160 million. “When I think about Beats, I think
about it as a lifestyle, I think of it as a media company, not just a hardware
and music-focused company.”
Jay Z’s fortune continues to grow at a healthy clip, too.
He’s made multiple nine-figure deals in the past, including his $204 million
Rocawear sale in 2007 and his $150 million pact with Live Nation in 2008. But
much of his recent growth comes from Roc Nation, his record label and
management firm that recently added a sports agency. The outfit gets a
single-digit cut of pacts like Robinson Cano’s $240 million monster agreement.
Bryan “Birdman” Williams, whose net worth would be over $300
million if he didn’t share his fortune with brother Ronald “Slim” Williams. The
duo cofounded Cash Money Records two decades ago; Cash Money continues to grow
with a roster that includes Drake, Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne. Birdman has also
diversified with Cash Money Content, GT Vodka and the YMCMB clothing line.
Rounding out the list is 50 Cent, who owes most of his
fortune to his $100 million haul from the sale of Vitaminwater in 2007. Now
he’s trying to repeat the feat with companies like SMS Audio and SK Energy beverages. In the
meantime, he’ll reboot his music career by taking his G-Unit Records
independent and releasing new album Animal Ambition in June.
“It was getting pretty difficult to launch music that
everyone was paying attention to at the same time,” says 50 Cent of his final
days at Interscope, the label that launched him to superstardom. “The company
itself was going through so many changes that I didn’t really know the people
involved in the projects anymore.”
In order to complete our Forbes Five list, we follow the same
procedures we follow while calculating our list of the world’s billionaires:
looking at past earnings, valuing current holdings, leafing through financial
documents and talking to analysts, attorneys, managers, other industry players
and even some of the moguls themselves—like Diddy, who already has his eye on
the next generation.
“My advice to future entrepreneurs is to always know reality,
to know what you’re getting yourself into, to know how hard it’s going to be,
how competitive it’s going to be,” he says. “We’re in a time where the people
that really work hard—and really believe in themselves, and really don’t give
up on their dreams, no matter how many times they fall down—are the ones that
are going to be successful.”
Source: Forbes Reports
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