Can you guess who is the only rock musician to make the Forbes 2023 billionaires list? 

You may be surprised when you discover which rock musician makes the Forbes 2023 Billionaires list. It’s also surprising to find only one other musician included on the list.

The Forbes annual list of billionaires is a good indication of wealth on a worldwide basis. The 2023 list has 2,640 billionaires on it. Perhaps there’s time to share a thought about how tough it is for people with such wealth. That number is down from 2,668 in 2022, with over half of the people on this year's list being poorer than a year ago!

When you hear of that drop in wealth, Elon Musk may come to mind. Surprisingly, although he fell to second place on the April 2023 list, a real time review run by Forbes has him currently back in the top spot, despite the Twitter, n/k/a X, troubles. 

But what of the music industry?  The list includes record label founders like David Geffen of Asylum Records, Geffen Records, and DGC Records. Although Geffen has sold his holding in the film studio Dreamworks, it will have boosted his overall wealth estimate at $7.6Bn by Forbes. 

Musicians on Forbes 2023 billionaires list 

There aren't many actual musicians listed as billionaires by Forbes. According to Forbes, Rapper Jay-Z is the top-ranking musician in position 1,217, with an estimated wealth of $2.5B. Which leaves one remaining musician as a billionaire. Forbes has that filled by none other than Jimmy Buffett. Yes, the man behind "Margaritaville" and “It’s Five O'clock Somewhere” has taken the 2,540 spot with a $1B wealth. 

That’s perhaps where the surprise comes in terms of who does make it on there and who is missing. It’s already noted that fortunes fell year on year, and that saw Kanye West drop out of the world billionaires reckoning for 2023. Perhaps surprisingly, Sir Paul McCartney isn’t there either. He has a wealth of just over a billion, but much of that is jointly owned and discounted on that basis by Forbes. 

Buffett developed Margaritaville Holdings from small beginnings after seeing others trying to make money from his name. So he started selling his own t-shirts and trinkets and grew a sideline business into a much bigger enterprise, including resorts, restaurants, a lifestyle brand, and, of course, a rum and margarita mix. 

All credit to Buffett for his hard work. He’s not who I would have expected to see up there in the billionaire's wealth ranking and in such limited musical company on the top wealth list. With that amount behind him, though, it’s no surprise if he’s still claiming it’s five o’clock somewhere on a regular basis. 

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