Taylor Swift buys back the rights to her master recordings

Taylor Swift has purchased again the rights to her first six albums, ending a long-running battle over the possession of her music.

“All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me,” stated the star, asserting the information on her official website. “I’ve been bursting into tears of joy… ever since I found out this is really happening.”

The saga started in June 2019, when music supervisor Scooter Braun purchased Swift’s former file label Huge Machine and, with it, the entire songs from Taylor Swift, Fearless, Converse Now, Crimson, 1989 and Popularity.

Swift had private objections to the deal, blaming Braun for complicity within the “incessant, manipulative bullying” in opposition to her by Kanye West, considered one of his purchasers.

On her web site, Swift stated that reclaiming the rights to her music had, for a very long time, appeared unimaginable.

“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it,” she added, thanking followers for his or her assist because the drama performed out.

“I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now.

“I virtually stopped considering it might ever occur, after 20 years of getting the carrot dangled after which yanked away,” she wrote.

“However that is all prior to now now.”

In the music industry, the owner of a master recording controls the way it is distributed and licenced. The artist still earns royalties, but controlling the masters offers protection over how the work is used in future.

Swift responded to the original sale of her masters by vowing to re-record those records, effectively diminishing the value of those master tapes, and putting ownership back in her hands.

To date, she has released four re-recorded albums – known as “Taylor’s Variations” – with dozens of bonus tracks and supplementary material.

In her letter, the star told fans she had yet to complete the project, after “hitting a stopping level” while trying to remake 2017’s Reputation album – which dealt with public scrutiny of her private life, and the fall-out of her feud with Kanye West.

“The Popularity album was so particular to that point in my life,” she explained. “All that defiance, that longing to be understood whereas feeling purposefully misunderstood…

“To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved by re-doing it… so I kept putting it off.”

Final week, the star previewed the brand new model of Popularity’s first single, Look What You Made Me Do, in an episode of The Handmaid’s Story – however her letter advised {that a} full re-recording could be delayed and even scrapped.

Nevertheless, she promised that vault tracks from the file could be launched at a future date, if followers have been “into the idea”.

She additionally confirmed that she had re-recorded her self-titled debut, including: “I really love how it sounds now”.

“Those two albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right,” she added.

“But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”

Because the identify suggests, a grasp recording is the unique recorded efficiency of a music. Whoever owns it controls all of the rights to take advantage of the music.

That features distributing it to streaming companies, urgent new bodily CDs and vinyl, creating field units, or licensing songs to motion pictures or video video games.

Swift, as the author or co-writer of her music, all the time maintained her publishing rights, which meant she was capable of veto makes an attempt to license songs like Shake It Off and Love Story to different firms.

“I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies. I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it,” she advised Billboard in 2019.

It’s not identified how a lot it value Swift to amass her masters, however the catalogue beforehand offered for $300m (£222m) in 2020.

The BBC understands that rumours she paid between $600m to $1bn are inaccurately excessive.

When 14-year-old Taylor Swift moved to Nashville in 2004 to chase her dream of turning into a rustic pop star, she signed a file cope with Huge Machine.

Label boss Scott Borchetta gave the unproven singer an enormous money advance in alternate for having possession of the grasp recordings to her first six albums “in perpetuity”.

This was pretty widespread observe within the period earlier than streaming, when artists wanted file label backing to get performed on the radio, and for the manufacture and distribution of CDs.

Swift’s cope with Huge Machine expired in 2018, at which level she left and signed with Republic Data and Common Music Group (UMG).

A yr later, Borchetta offered his label to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings.

Swift stated she solely realized in regards to the deal when it was introduced; characterising it as an act of aggression that “stripped me of my life’s work”.

She labelled Braun – who rose to prominence because the supervisor of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande – as “the definition of toxic male privilege in our industry”.

She additionally expressed frustration that she had been unable to make a counter supply for her music.

“I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity,” she told Billboard, including that: “Artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.”

Braun later advised Selection that the dispute had “gotten out of hand” after he and his household obtained dying threats.

The music mogul later offered his stake in Swift’s again catalogue to Shamrock Holdings, a Los Angeles funding fund based by the Disney household in 1978, in November 2020.

The multi-million greenback deal left Swift feeling betrayed once more.

“This is the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge,” she stated in a social media submit.

Whereas she was “open to the possibility of a partnership with Shamrock”, she subsequently learnt that, below the phrases of the sale, Braun would “continue to profit off my old music” for years.

“I simply cannot in good conscience bring myself to be involved in benefiting Scooter Braun’s interests,” she wrote in a letter to the corporate, which she posted on X.

She started releasing her re-recorded albums in 2021, beginning along with her breakthrough, coming-of-age album Fearless.

Produced with forensic consideration to element, they have been usually indistinguishable from the originals – albeit with barely cleaner mixes, and better separation between the devices.

However the massive attraction was the bonus tracks, together with the unabridged, 10-minute model of her break-up ballad All Too Properly – described by Selection journal because the “holy grail” of the star’s again catalogue.

The music went on to high the US charts, and made quantity three within the UK – the place it’s the longest music ever to succeed in the highest 5.

Within the meantime, the singer continued to launch unique materials, together with the Grammy Award-winning albums Folklore and Midnights.

In 2023, Forbes journal reported that Swift had change into the primary musician to make $1 billion (£740 million) solely from songwriting and performing.

Half of her fortune got here from music royalties and touring, whereas the remaining got here from the growing worth of her music catalogue, together with her re-recordings.

Revisiting the previous materials additionally impressed Swift’s career-spanning Eras tour, which made greater than $2 billion (£1.48 billion) in ticket gross sales throughout 2023 and 2024.

In her letter, Swift stated the success of the Eras tour “is why I was able to buy back my music”.

She added that she was heartened to see her battle inspiring different artists.

“Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I’m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen.

“Thanks being inquisitive about one thing that was regarded as too industry-centric for broad dialogue.

“You’ll never know how much it means to me that you cared. Every single bit of it counted, and ended us up here.”