Lance Bass Reveals Shockingly Low *NSYNC Salary

Although *NSYNC is arguably one of the biggest boy bands in history, Lance Bass admits he didn’t earn much during the group’s heyday. 

During a recent appearance on The Zach Sang Show, Bass revealed that he and his bandmates only earned $35 a day. The band consisted of Bass, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, and Justin Timberlake.

“We had a per diem: $35 per day,” he stated. “Our first check was $10,000 … after years of No. 1 albums, sellout tours. Man, I don’t know how many millions I made off of merchandise because merchandise was insane, and then they finally gave us a check for $10,000. They’re like, ‘You should be grateful for that. You’ve been working for free for two, three years now.’”

While he does earn some residuals, Bass said they’re nowhere near what others would expect.

“You get residuals, for sure, but it’s not much,” he noted. “People think I’m so filthy rich from *NSYNC, but no. Not at all. You know, I did well after *NSYNC, and I’m very proud of everything I did after that, but I didn’t make money with *NSYNC, like, hardly at all.”

Although the bandmates didn’t make a lot, Bass pointed out that the label and the group’s disgraced manager, Lou Pearlman, “made a F-ton.”

“You know, [Lou was] one of the biggest scam artists of all time [and] made a lot,” he said. The band’s manager notably ran an infamous Ponzi scheme. He was eventually convicted of conspiracy, money laundering, and bankruptcy fraud. Following his conviction, Pearlman was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died while serving his prison sentence in August 2016.

Bass admitted that while he resented Pearlman and the label’s stipends, he doesn’t anymore.

“I did at one time, like, God, who was there to protect us?” he pointed out. “I was, kind of, mad at the adults in the room … saying, ‘You’re just a kid, you’re fine, dance, land on your knees. You’re young, you know, you don’t need to sleep; you’re a kid.’”

He then added, “Everyone kept saying, ‘You’re young, you’re young.’ Well, who cares if you’re young? You still need to make a living and set yourself up for the future because [in] most of these cases, it’s a finite time of being able to do something like that, and no one set us up for life after that.”