Lance Bass says he and his *NSYNC bandmates were told to feel grateful for a $10,000 check after years of global stardom.
The 47-year-old singer made the claim during Thursday’s episode of “The Zach Sang Show,” where he detailed what he described as meager financial rewards during the peak of the boy band’s fame. Bass said the group received that single payment only after delivering multiple chart-topping albums and sellout tours.
“You should be grateful for that. You’ve been working for free for two, three years now,” Bass recalled being told when the check finally arrived.
Bass painted a stark picture of day-to-day life during the group’s rise, claiming the five members survived on a per diem of just $35 daily. While merchandise sales exploded, he said the profits vanished elsewhere. “I don’t know how many millions I made off of merchandise because merchandise was insane,” he noted, suggesting the revenue never reached the performers.
The financial structure, according to Bass, funneled the real money upward. “The label” and Lou Pearlman, the group’s late manager, “made a f–k ton,” he alleged. Pearlman, who formed the band in 1995 with Bass, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone, later became notorious for financial crimes. He was convicted in 2008 of money laundering, bankruptcy fraud and conspiracy, and died in prison in 2016.
Despite the long-ago exploitation, Bass said any resentment has faded. “Not anymore,” he responded when asked if he still carried anger. Yet he maintained the fundamental unfairness of the arrangement, particularly the way youth was used to justify low pay.
“Everyone kept saying, ‘You’re young, you’re young,'” he recounted. “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.”
The financial aftermath lingers in diminished form. Bass acknowledged receiving residuals from the group’s catalog, but dismissed their significance. “For sure” he gets them, he said, yet “it’s not much.” The perception of wealth, he insisted, remains wildly inaccurate. “People think I’m so filthy rich from *NSYNC, but no,” he stated flatly. “Not at all.”
This was not Bass’s first public accounting of the group’s finances. During a 2023 appearance on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show,” he delivered an even blunter assessment. “We were famous, but we were not rich,” he confessed then, adding that the misconception was “the worst thing.” The post-*NSYNC period proved more lucrative personally: “I made way more money after *NSYNC than I did during *NSYNC.”
Bass credited the band experience itself, rather than its paychecks, with providing lasting value. “Obviously” being part of *NSYNC at its height changed his life trajectory, he allowed. The four other members offered something money could not. “We had a great support system,” he said. “I’m glad I was in a band, because I had four of my brothers that kept you down to earth.”
He also noted that his post-hiatus career, which began in 2002, left him satisfied. “I did well” afterward, he said, and he’s “very proud of everything [he] did after that.” The *NSYNC chapter itself, however, he summarized with a single stark figure: “I didn’t make money with *NSYNC, like, hardly at all.”
Bass continues to co-host “The Daily Popcast with Lance Bass,” which releases new episodes weekly.