Taylor Swift Beat Out Adele As Last Year's Highest-Paid Musician

Happy birthday, Adele! Your present this year is making about $50 million less than Taylor Swift.

On Thursday, Billboard released its list of the 40 highest-paid musicians in 2015. Taylor Swift easily beat out all competitors, topping the chart with $73.5 million in total revenue.

The total takes into account money coming from album sales, streaming, publishing and touring.

Touring seems to be the deciding factor here — $61.7 million of Tay's cash this year came from her tour.

Coming in second place, though almost $40 million behind T-Swizzle, is country singer Kenny Chesney. He raked in $38.1 million with his "Big Revival" tour, bringing him to a total of $39.8 million.

Adele, meanwhile, is way down in the number nine slot, with a total revenue of $20.5 million. But considering Adele didn't tour in 2015, this is actually really impressive.

Adele actually made more than Taylor on straight sales, with $16.3 million to Tay's $7.2 million. Adele's album 25 sold over 5.5 million copies, and she is the only artist who didn't tour.

Personally, I learned a lot from this list, like the fact that it's nearly impossible for musicians to make bank without touring.

But I think the biggest take away from this is all of these people are very, very rich. Especially Taylor Swift.

Citations: Taylor Swift Tops Billboard's Top Money-Makers List of 2015 (Billboard)