Forbes Daily: Digging Into Profits From Beyond The Grave

Good morning,

Happy Halloween from Forbes! 🎃 On this spookiest of holidays, we thought it would be fun to brew up something a little different for you in today’s edition of the Forbes Daily.

To get in the spirit of the day, we pulled together a newsletter with some of our favorite creepy reporting from Forbes. From the business of witchcraft on Etsy to the grim—and lucrative—reality of catastrophe bonds, our journalists have covered some disconcerting subjects in the past year. But just like the thrill of watching a horror movie, it can be fun to have a good scare with your news every now and then.

We’ll return to our usual format tomorrow, but in the meantime, sit back, grab a handful of fun-sized candy bars and enjoy a very Forbes-y Halloween.

illustration by Liza Shumskaya for forbes

TOPLINE Death comes for us all, eventually. But for some folks, shuffling off this mortal coil doesn’t necessarily mean the money stops rolling in.

Take rock stars, for instance. In 2024, several music legends—including Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, Bob Marley and Whitney Houston—are again topping the charts of the highest-paid dead celebrities. Music catalog income and estate deals remain the top income generators for deceased recording artists.

Jackson’s estate, for example, scored a huge win in August after a judge ruled that the $600 million catalog sale of his publishing and recorded masters’ rights to Sony could proceed, despite protestations from the late artist’s mother.

Beyond the music world, several other entertainers are raking in cash from the great beyond. The late Friends star Matthew Perry became the rare television actor to make the list. (The comedy duo Abbott & Costello—primarily considered film stars—were the first back in 1988 when Forbes launched the Highest-Paid Dead Celebrities list.)

Meanwhile, golf legend Arnold Palmer, who died in 2016, turned a homemade drink into a bona fide business success. Palmer’s namesake iced tea and lemonade drink produced by AriZona generates some $300 million annually in revenues, while spiked versions from Molson Coors pull in millions more.

WHY IT MATTERS “Estate management for deceased musicians, actors and other notable public figures is a sizable industry within entertainment that has billions of dollars at stake,” says Senior Entertainment Reporter Lisette Voytko-Best.........

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