Marley joins ranks of high-earning legacy acts

Bob Marley ranks among the top echelon of celebrities whose stardom - and earnings power - have swelled since their deaths.

Michael Jackson has topped Forbes' list of top-earning dead celebrities in four of the five years since his death. The King of Pop's second posthumous album, released this year, debuted at number two on the Billboard charts. His estate has earned $700m since his death, according to Michael Jackson Inc, a recent book about the singer's business empire.

For the Marley estate, the new Marley Natural cannabis line will join licensing ventures in apparel, audio accessories and even coffee that helped pull in $20m last year, according to Forbes. But his music has also found enduring popularity.

This September, three decades after its release, the posthumous Marley album Legend cracked Billboard's top 10 albums by sales - the highest spot ever reached by the Jamaican reggae star.

The greatest hits album has had a remarkable run since its release in 1984, three years after Marley's death. It has sold 11.7m copies since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991, making it the biggest seller of any album released before that year and more popular than many released decades later, such as 'N Sync's No Strings Attached. It has spent more than 330 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart, second only to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

"In reggae, I don't know that you have another record that defines [the genre] like Bob Marley does," said David Bakula, senior vice-president at Nielsen Entertainment. "His place is unique - you just don't see that across other genres."

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The estates of the most enduring stars, including Marley, Presley and Marilyn Monroe, have become big businesses that control increasingly valuable brands.

Authentic Brands Group bought Presley's rights, including a stake in operating Graceland, alongside rights to Muhammad Ali last year for a reported $120m. It also controls rights to Monroe's image, which it acquired in 2011 for a reported $30m.

Forbes estimates Presley's estate brought in $44m last year, while Monroe earned $17m.

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