Earlier this week, Billboard revealed its year-end Boxscore charts, ranking the top tours, venues and promoters of 2024. We’re breaking it down further, looking at the biggest live acts, genre by genre. Today, we continue with R&B.
First, the bad news: Grosses for the top 10 R&B tours are down in 2024. Last year’s crop grossed more than $1.1 billion, and this year’s group collectively earned $580 million. That’s a loss of almost 50%, with this year’s top 10 barely out-grossing last year’s No. 1. But that brings us to an important distinction: Beyoncé ruled the R&B list — and the all-genre tally, for that matter — in 2023, with a record-setting $570.5 million for the Renaissance World Tour. That was the biggest one-year gross in Boxscore history, for any artist of any genre. With Queen Bey off cycle in 2024, R&B’s total was bound to crash.
But that means that if we exclude Beyoncé’s anomalous gross, this year’s top 10 is about even — or less than 5% down — from 2023, and up from 2022. This year was also faced with much lighter calendars for heavyweights such as SZA and The Weeknd. A cross-generational slate of artists picked up the slack, from Lionel Richie to Mariah Carey to Jhene Aiko.
Several of this year’s top 10 have more shows on the books in 2025, from the continuation of Usher: Past Present Future, to The Weeknd’s years-long After Hours til Dawn Tour.
Keep reading to check out the 10 highest-grossing tours by R&B acts in 2024, with such acts qualifying due to recent performance on Billboard’s Top R&B Albums and/or Hot R&B Songs charts. Rankings are determined according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. All reported shows worldwide between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024, are eligible.
