Lady Gaga has been named the highest-earning female music artist of 2011, earning $90 million (£58 million) this year alone.
The Forbes Top-Earning Women In Music List showed that the Bad Romance star’s earnings was more than the combined earnings of the second and third-highest-paid female artists in the list, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.
Country star Swift reportedly earned $45 million this year, while Katy Perry raked in $44 million.
Gaga has seen strong album sales this year with Born This Way, but she has also gone on a huge world tour. She has also earned money from a number of other endorsements. The singer recently revealed that she is already working on a third album and has chosen a name for it.
Beyonce Knowles was named the fourth-highest-earning female artist of this year, followed by Rihanna and Pink.
Adele was ninth in the list, with earnings of $18 million. This is largely down to sales of her album 21, as she has been forced to cancel her tour and she was relatively unknown in the US before releasing her second album.
Meanwhile, some popstars who have been off the radar this year have still made the list. Celine Dion is number eighth in the list (she has been performing every night in Las Vegas), while Alicia Keys and Britney Spears are joint-tenth.
However, while female music artists have dominated the charts this year, only five were listed in Forbes’ list of the 25 highest-paid musicians.
Entertainment attorney Lori Landew told the news provider that women artists “seem to be less likely to diversify their holdings and to build multi-tier enterprises to take advantage of their success and celebrity”.
She suggested that women are presented with fewer opportunities, but stressed “one need only look at Oprah or Madonna to know that it doesn’t take a Y chromosome to be a successful entertainment visionary or entrepreneur”.