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9. Taylor Swift
Earnings: $80M
Musician
The singer-songwriter completed her transition from country starlet to pop superstar with the launch of album 1989, the top release of 2014 with over 3.6 million copies sold–making her one of only three artists with a platinum album last year. That new state of affairs is partly due to the rise of streaming, a distribution system of which Swift has become one of the most outspoken critics, pulling her music from Spotify in November and forcing Apple in June to pay artists during their service’s free trial period.
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