Etc.

High-mileage pop music tours rake in the megamillions

Wherever pop singer Madonna's favorite retreat is, she's probably there now, decompressing after her ambitious four-month, 16-nation "Sticky & Sweet" concert tour. It set a record as the largest-grossing in history by a solo artist. The tour did $280 million in ticket sales and lured 2,350,282 fans from beginning (Aug. 23 in Cardiff, Wales) to end (in São Paulo, Brazil, four days before Christmas). Not surprisingly, the North American leg earned recognition as the continent's biggest-grossing, raking in $105.3 million, according to the music industry magazine Pollstar. Even so, Madonna didn't own an especially big lead over Celine Dion, the Canadian songstress who also took her act on the road after almost five years playing Las Vegas. The artists who had the largest-grossing North American concert tours last year, according to Pollstar, with ticket sales in millions of dollars: