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Taylor Swift Ranked World’s Highest-Paid Celebrity Amid Scooter Braun Feud

Nothing can rain on Taylor Swift’s parade! Forbes revealed that the Grammy winner ranked as the world’s highest-paid celebrity amid her public feud with Scooter Braun.

Related: Taylor Swift vs Scooter Braun: Celebs Take Sides

Taylor Swift World’s Highest Paid Celebrity
Taylor Swift Rich Fury/Getty Images

The 29-year-old “You Need to Calm Down” singer scored the No. 1 spot on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list for accumulating a massive pre-tax income of $185 million. The publication noted on Wednesday, July 10, this was Swift’s “biggest earnings total yet” and it allowed her overall salary to spike by 131 percent after she raked in $80 million last year.

In 2018, Swift embarked on her largest concert series yet with the Reputation Stadium Tour from May to November — drumming up a whopping $345 million. It was later transformed into a Netflix live concert film that hit the streaming service on New Year’s Eve that year. According to Forbes, Netflix’s “payout and endorsement deals with Apple, AT&T and Diet Coke added millions to Swift’s coffers.”

Related: Everything We Know About Taylor Swift’s 7th Album

This celebratory occasion for Swift marks the singer’s second time atop Forbes’ list. She last nabbed the coveted spot in 2016 upon garnering $170 million due to sales from her 1989 World Tour the year before.

For this year’s list, Swift edged out self-made billionaire Kylie Jenner — who earned $170 million largely due to her beauty business, Kylie Cosmetics, and came in second place. Jenner, 21, was followed by Kanye West, Lionel Messi and Ed Sheeran, who landed in third, fourth and fifth place, respectively.

Arriving at the top of Forbes’ list is a big win for Swift, as she recently chose to take a stand and publicize her distaste for music mogul Braun, 38, on Tumblr after he bought her former label, Big Machine Label Group (BMLG). The record company currently owns the country crossover’s master recordings, which she claimed to have “pleaded for a chance to own” before leaving for Universal Music Group (UMG) in November 2018.

Related: 10 Artists and Bands Who Own Their Masters

In the Tumblr post, Swift regarded Braun’s purchase of BMLG as her “worst case scenario” because she alleged to have been a victim of his “incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.”

“This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it,” Swift wrote on June 30. “When I left my masters in [BLMG CEO] Scott [Borchetta]’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually, he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter.

Braun hasn’t made a public statement addressing Swift’s accusation, but a source told Us Weekly that he “wants to have a private, direct conversation with Taylor.” The insider also noted that the high-profile manager has already “tried to reach Taylor through multiple channels.”

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