Why Do People Get Lots Of Money Just Singing

well if people like the songs then buy them. the artist gets royalties (ie: their cut) off each copy of the song or album that is sold. Also, if they are popular enough they will get a deal with someone to produce mercantilism (clothes, cups, caps, ect) with their image on it, they then get cut of the profit from each sale of those. Like Hanna Montana (shudder, puke) did. Also, by doing endorsements, like commercials for Nike, or something like that they get paid basically to have their face in that commercial, ussually a decent amount of money if they singer is well known.

Now an artist royalties and cut of the profit from merchandise isn’t ussually that much, something like 5% on most songs. But when they sale 2-3 million copies of a cd it adds up, even if they only make $0.10 per cd, 2 million copies of that cd is $200,000.00.

Similar idea applies for actors, but they ussually get paid x amount for doing a movie regardless of how many copies are sold.

as for an estimate on what a very popular singer makes I have no idea. try google. ./shrug