How much did Charli XCX earn from Brat Summer?

This weekend, Brat Summer officially ended and Charli XCX is now on the road for a week with Troye Sivan on her 21-city arena tour of North America. So how much was Brat Summer worth?

While it's impossible to say how much Charli has earned overall from the movement surrounding “Brat,” a colorful concept based on spontaneity and living life to the fullest, we crunched the numbers on some summer Brat deals. By our rough estimate, those deals — specifically her share of ticket sales from her co-headlining “Sweat” tour and other shows, the revenue from her catalog and songwriter royalties this year, and the H&M ad campaign deal — have earned Charli around $9.62 million so far this year.

bratCharli XCX's sixth album, which debuted at number 3 on the June 7 Billboard 200 is by far the long-time London rave singer's most commercially successful album. The lime green album cover, Charli's candid, sometimes vulnerable lyrics and frank discussion of what it means to be a “brat” resonated with audiences and put Charli at the center of cultural debate, from Vice President Kamala Harris's US presidential campaign to a vegan sausage maker embracing “brat” culture.

“She has the attention of anyone she wants right now,” says Jenna Adler, Charli's agent at CAA. The album's 23 tracks (including remixes) surpassed over a billion streams on Spotify in late August, and her catalog has amassed around two billion on-demand streams worldwide, according to Luminate. Charli announced brand partnerships with H&M and Skims, and her first North American arena tour with Sivan sold out immediately, selling out shows in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

Tours

The momentum built over the course of Brat Summer helped the couple Charli XCX and Sivan sell more than 97%, or 261,694 of 269,733 of all available tickets for their Sweat tour, Adler says.

With an average ticket price of around 90 US dollars Billboard estimates that the tour grossed about $23.5 million. After various expenses, including the artist manager's fee, touring artists typically take home about 34% of ticket sales, so in this case, about $8 million. If it was a co-headlining tour, that would likely be split 50/50, with Charli making $4 million.

To build excitement ahead of the arena tour, Charli headlined several sold-out shows called “Charli XCX Presents: PARTYGIRL” shows, and they were intentionally kept small so fans felt like they were part of a dance party hosted by Charli XCX DJs, Adler says.

Three of those shows – which took place in London, Los Angeles and Sao Paulo in June – generated gross revenue of $377,300 from a total of 7,413 tickets sold, according to figures released Billboard Match report. Billboard does not have data for two other shows Charli headlined in Brooklyn and Chicago, and our calculations do not include Charli XCX's numerous festival appearances this year or revenue from merchandise sold at concerts – an area of ​​touring that can be quite lucrative.

The Sweat tour will be the first time that Charli or Sivan will headline arenas in the world's largest music market. Tickets went on sale on April 26. By the end of May, around 70% of tickets had been sold, by mid-June that figure had already risen to 80%, and by the end of July it was over 90%. Billboard reported.

Estimated total touring revenue (for 3 Party Girl shows and Sweat Tour): $4.1 million

Streaming

Kamala Harris' presidential campaign took its cue from Brat Summer on July 21, the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Harris. Charli XCX posted “Kamala IS a brat” on X (formerly Twitter), Harris' campaign briefly adopted the brat's lime green color on social platforms, and during the week of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, August 19-25, she was the sole sponsor of the official Spotify playlist “This is Charli XCX.”

Although Charli did not directly benefit from the sponsorship—Spotify was paid an undisclosed amount as part of the Harris/Walz campaign—the popular playlist, featuring two and a half hours of her most popular songs, saw a boost in listeners and followers.

About 127,000 Spotify users follow — or have saved — the Spotify playlist. Between August 10 and September 10, it gained 12,400 new followers, with about 5,000 users accumulating during the period of support for the Harris campaign, according to Chartmetric.

The playlist's monthly Spotify listeners increased by 8.6 million, or 23.4%, to 45.5 million between August 12 and August 27. Listeners dipped slightly in the three days leading up to August 19, the first day of the DNC convention, but that trend reversed, and the largest single-day increase occurred on August 20. As of August 28, Brat's Gör's 23 official tracks, remixes, and bonus tracks had nearly 1.08 billion streams on Spotify, according to Chartmetric.

Globally, Charli XCX's catalog has amassed nearly 2 billion on-demand streams, according to Luminate. So far this year, through Sept. 9, her catalog of recorded music has generated 722,000 album consumption units in the United States, compared to an average of 216,000 album consumption units from 2021 to 2024, according to Luminate. Her songs have generated 781.13 million on-demand streams in the U.S. this year, primarily audio on-demand streams. Scheduled streams exceeded 10.73 million, or double her three-year average.

That equates to nearly $6 million in revenue for her U.S. label and $13.4 million worldwide so far this year, based on Billboard Estimates calculated using RIAA US data to determine wholesale prices and per-stream rates provided by financial sources at major and independent labels. If Charli XCX receives traditional superstar royalties of 22% for “sale” formats such as CDs, vinyl and downloads and 37% for on-demand streaming, Billboard estimates that her net salary this year, minus the usual 4% producer fee, would be nearly $4.1 million.

Charli's master recordings have earned publishers of her commissioned songwriters $1.52 million in royalties, and when extrapolated to worldwide publishing revenues, that's nearly $3.5 million in publishing royalties. Billboard's estimates.

Billboard It is estimated that Charli XCX has a 30% songwriter's share for the songs on her album, meaning her publisher would net around $1.05 million for the worldwide activities of her catalog so far this year. If Charli had a traditional 50/50 deal to split publishing revenues, she would receive $525,000; if she signed a 75/25 co-publishing deal, she would net around $788,000; and if she owns her publishing royalties and has signed a management deal that can range from 85/15 to 94/6, with up to 94% of publishing revenues going to the songwriter and 6% to the administrator, she could net up to $922,000. (Calculations based on a typical management ratio of 88%.)

Estimated total revenue from streaming, catalog and publishing: max. $5.02 million.

Brand offers

Last month, Kim Kardashian's SKIMS and H&M launched campaigns featuring Charli XCX. In the SKIMS campaign, which launched on August 21, Charli showcases the new cotton collection of boxer briefs, bralettes and fleece pants. For H&M, Charli is featured in the global retailer's Fall/Winter 2024 campaign alongside other culture changers such as Arca, Lila Moss, Ajus Samuel, Loli Bahia, Wali Deutsch and more. Financial details of these deals are not public, but sources estimate that Charli received a mid-six-figure amount for her deal with H&M.

Billboard has previously reported that music industry branding deals contribute $2.6 billion in revenue annually, with sponsorship spending for music tours, venues and festivals accounting for more than 60% of that amount. The rest comes from fees paid for the use of music in advertisements, films, games and television shows, with promotional payments, such as partnerships with clothing brands, accounting for the smallest portion of revenue.

Marcie Allenthe president of MAC (Marcie Allen Consulting), known for brokering some of the most prominent brand partnerships in the music industry, says that such deals and the requirements to close them are rarely about money.

To gain the attention of the top companies serving the Gen Z market, “it's not just about attention, recognition or buzz. It's about breaking through the culture to create an entire subculture, a new use of language and ultimately embedding yourself in the identity.”

“The concept of 'going viral' is fundamentally changing and Charli XCX's 'Brat Summer' is a perfect example.”

Additional reporting by Ed Christman and Eric Frankenberg

This is the first part of a new column from Billboard in which each week we discuss a financial issue facing an artist in the news. Thanks for reading, and if you have any suggestions or tips, email me at [email protected].