NEW: Pauly D Named 7th Highest-Paid DJ in the World

Thursday, August 02, 2012

GoLocalProv Features Team

He's got plenty to smile about: DJ Pauly D posted $11 million in earnings, putting him among the highest-paid DJs in the world, according to Forbes.

Rhode Island's own DJ Pauly D has just been named by Forbes Magazine as one of the Top 10 Highest Paid DJ's in the World. The Johnston homeboy logs in among some of the highest profile artists in the world at #7, with earnings estimated by Forbes at $11 million.

Forbes' estimates including earnings from live shows, recorded music sales, merchandise sales, and in the case of our own Pauly D, television. "We included him on this list because, like his fellow Electronic Cash Kings, he makes at least half his cash from DJ gigs," wrote Forbes' Zack O'Malley Greenburg.

Rags to riches

"The Rhode Island native never attended college, instead taking a job at a car dealership after high school," Greenbrug writes about Pauly D. "For much of the last decade, he spent the bulk of his nights and weekends DJing small clubs in Providence for a few hundred dollars a pop."

The big break, of course, came in 2009, when Pauly D broke onto MTV's Jersey Shore. "Three years later he's got a slew of eponymous products, his own television show and a DJ career that earns him an average of $40,000 per show from club gigs, private parties and a stint opening for Britney Spears," writes Greenburg.

Dutch-born DJ Tiesto topped the list with earnings of $22 million, according to Greenburg, "buoyed by an average nightly gross of $250,000." There's a Rhode Island connection: Tiesto played URI this fall, and is expected to come back to RI again this year. Behind Tiesto, the California-born Skrillex took in $15 and ranked #2. Swedish House Mafia, now disbanded, logged in $14 million for #3.

For the entire list and more about each DJ, go here.

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Comments:

Charles Drago

2:01pm on Thursday, August 02, 2012

The American Idiocracy rules the world.

The Ignorati are the new Great Unwashed.

Jonathan Flynn

9:35pm on Thursday, August 02, 2012

For once I agree with Mr. Drago. This is a sure sign of the coming apocalypse.