Taylor Swift recovers the property of its first 6 albums

Image source, Getty images
- Author, Mark Savage
- Author’s title, Show editor, BBC News
The American singer Taylor Swift repurred the rights of her first six albums, ending a long battle for the property of her music.
“All the music that I have created now belongs to me,” said the star when announcing the news on its official website. “I’ve been crying with joy … since I discovered that this is really happening.”
The saga began in June 2019, when musical representative Scooter Braun bought Big Machine, the former Swift record label, and with him, all the songs of the first six albums: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and Reputation.
Swift had personal objections to the agreement, blaming Braun of complicity in the “incessant and manipulative harassment” that rapper Kanye West, one of his clients, exercised on her.
Image source, Medium pa
On his website, Swift declared that recovering the rights of his music had seemed, for a long time, unimaginable.
“To say that this is my biggest dream, reality is to be, in reality, quite reserved,” he added, thanking his fans for his support during the drama.
“I have no words to thank you for helping me to meet again with this art that I have dedicated my life, but I had never possessed so far.
“I almost stopped thinking that it could happen, after 20 years that they offered it to me and then they took it away,” he wrote.
“But all that is already a thing of the past.”
In the music industry, the owner of a master recording controls how it is distributed and license. The artist continues to receive royalties, but controlling the master recordings offers protection on how the work will be used in the future.
Recorded discs
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Swift responded to the original sale of his first six albums promising to re -record them, which reduced the value of the master recordings.
To date, he has launched four re -recorded albums, known as “Taylor’s Versions”, with dozens of additional tracks and complementary material.
In a letter, the star told her fans that she had not yet completed the project, after “reaching a dead point” while trying to rebuild the album Reputation of 2017, in which he addressed the public scrutiny of his private life and the consequences of his dispute with Kanye West.
“The album Reputation It was so specific to that time of my life, “he explained.
“All that rebellion, that desire to be understood while felt misunderstood on purpose … to be sincere, it is the only album of those first six that I thought could not be improved by removing it … so I continued postponing it.”
Last week, the star advanced the new version of the first single from Reputation“Look What You Made Me Do”, in an episode of the series “The Tale of the Maid”, but in his letter he suggested that a complete refrabation would be delayed or even canceled.
However, he promised that he would launch album files soon, if fans were interested in the idea.
He also confirmed that he had re -recorded his homonymous debut album, and added: “I love how it sounds now.”
“Those two albums can still have their time to resurface when the right time,” he added.
“But if it happens, it will not be from the sadness and the longing for what I would like to have. It will simply be a celebration now.”
Image source, Getty images
What is a master recording?
As the name implies, a master recording is the original recorded interpretation of a song. Who possesses it controls all the rights to exploit it.
This includes distributing it to platforms streaming, Publish new CDs and physical vinyl, create compilation boxes or license songs for movies or video games.
Swift, as a composer or co -author of her music, always retained her publication rights, which allowed her to veto the attempts to license songs to other companies.
“I want my music to last. I want it to appear in movies. I want it to appear in ads. But I just want that if I am the owner,” he told Billboard In 2019.
It is unknown how much it cost Swift to acquire its master recordings, but the catalog was sold for US $ 300 million in 2020.
How did everything start?
When Taylor Swift moved 14 years old to Nashville in 2004 to pursue his dream of becoming a country pop star, he signed a record contract with Big Machine.
The director of the Seal, Scott Borchetta, gave the singer, still inexperienced, an important advance in cash in exchange for the ownership of the master recordings of their first six albums “to perpetuity”.
This was a fairly common practice in the era prior to the streamingWhen the artists needed the support of a record label to sound on the radio and for the manufacture and distribution of CDs.
The swift contract with Big Machine expired in 2018, at which time he left the label and signed with Republic Records and Universal Music Group (UMG).
A year later, Borchetta sold his stamp to Ithaca Holdings, from Scooter Braun.
Swift said that he only learned of the agreement when he was announced, describing him as an act of aggression that “stripped me of my life.”
He described Braun, who jumped to fame as a representative of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, as “the very definition of toxic male privilege in our industry.”
He also expressed his frustration for not being able to present a counteroffert for his music.
“I spent 10 years of my life trying hard to buy my recordings directly and then denied that opportunity,” he told Billboard, adding that “perhaps the artists should have the right of preference to buy.”
Image source, Medium pa
Braun subsequently declared Variety that the dispute had “gone out of control” after receiving him and his family death threats.
The musical tycoon sold in November 2020 his participation in Swift’s previous catalog to Shamrock Holdings, an Los Angeles investment fund founded by the Disney family in 1978.
The billionaire agreement left Swift with a new feeling of betrayal.
“This is the second time they sell my music without my knowledge,” he said in a publication on social networks.
While it was “open to the possibility of an association with Shamrock,” later he learned that, according to the terms of the sale, Braun “would continue to profit from my old music” for years.
“I simply cannot, in conscience, get involved in the benefit of the interests of Scooter Braun,” he wrote in a letter to the company, which he published in X.
Swift began publishing his albums re -recorded in 2021, starting with his album Revelation Fearlessabout his passage to adulthood.
Produced with a thorough attention to detail, they were often indistinguishable from the originals, although with slightly cleaner mixtures and greater separation between the instruments.
But the great attraction were the bonus tracks, including the full version of 10 minutes of its ballad “All Too Well”, described by the magazine Variety as the “Holy Grail” of the Star Catalog.
The song reached the top of American success lists and reached number 3 in the United Kingdom, where it is the longest song to reach Top 5.
Meanwhile, the singer continued to publish original material, including Grammy winning albums, Folklore and Midnights.
Reviewing the old material also inspired the ERAS tour, in which Swift covered his entire career and raised more than US $ 2 billion in ticket sales between 2023 and 2024.
In his letter, Swift said that the success of the Eras tour “is the reason why I could repurchase my music.”
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