After a years-long dispute over the ownership of Taylor Swift’s music catalog, the pop superstar can officially call all of her old albums “mine.”
In a letter posted on her website on Friday, Swift announced that she had bought the masters, or original recordings, of her first six albums from Shamrock Capital nearly six years after her former record label, Big Machine Records, sold them to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in what she described at the time as her “worst case scenario.”
Swift said she now owns all of her music videos, concert films, album art and photography, and unreleased songs as well.
“I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now. I’ve been bursting into years of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” Swift said in the letter.
“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it,” she continued. “All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy.”
Why did Taylor Swift need to buy her own music?
Swift has long expressed the desire to own her masters.
She left Big Machine Records, where she recorded her first six albums, in 2018 when her deal with the label expired and signed with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records. The following year, Big Machine sold her masters to Ithaca Holdings.
In a Tumblr post soon after the sale was announced, Swift slammed the deal, saying that Braun “has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy.” She said that she had “pleaded for a chance” to own her work for years, but was instead “given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in.”
“I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future,” Swift said in her Tumblr post, referring to the label’s founder. “I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past.”
She condemned the sale of her work to Braun in particular and accused the then-music manager of bullying her, at times with his clients, including Kanye West. When she left her masters in Borchetta’s hands, she said, she knew that he would sell them, but ”never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.”
In response to Swift’s post, Borchetta wrote on Big Machine’s website that “Taylor had every chance in the world to own not just her master recordings, but every video, photograph, everything associated to her career. She chose to leave.” Responding to her comments about being near tears whenever Braun’s name came up, Borchetta said, “I certainly never experienced that.”
Shamrock Capital, an investment firm, acquired the rights to Swift’s first six albums from Braun in 2020, a year after his company purchased Swift’s masters.
Swift said in a post on social media at the time that the deal happened without her knowledge and she learned about it when Shamrock sent her team a letter.
“The letter told me that they wanted to reach out before the sale to let me know, but that Scooter Braun had required that they make no contact with me or my team, or the deal would be off,” she said. “As soon as we started communication with Shamrock, I learned that under their terms Scooter Braun will continue to profit off my old musical catalog for many years. I was hopeful and open to the possibility of a partnership with Shamrock, but Scooter’s participation is a non-starter for me.”
Swift also said in the post that her team had tried to engage in negotiations with Braun over her masters, but that Braun’s team had wanted her to “sign an ironclad NDA stating I would never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive, before we could even look at the financial records” of Big Machine, which she noted is typically the first step in a deal of that kind. She said her legal team said that was not normal. Braun “would never even quote my team a price,” she added.
In a 2021 interview with Variety, Braun was asked about Swift’s reaction to the dispute over her masters. He claimed he asked Swift to sit down with him “several times, but she refused.”
“I offered to sell her the catalog back and went under NDA, but her team refused. It all seems very unfortunate,” he told the outlet. “I find her to be an incredibly talented artist and wish her nothing but the best.” Braun’s team disputed Swift’s claims and said that talks had begun in earnest.
In her Friday letter, Swift thanked Shamrock “for being the first people to ever offer this to me,” adding that the people there have been “honest, fair, and respectful.”
“This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams,” she said. “I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
What does the deal mean for her rerecording project?
Over the past few years, Swift has been rerecording her first six albums in an effort to regain control over her work.
She has so far released four rerecorded albums: Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021, and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in 2023.
Swift owns the masters for the work she has recorded under her contract with Republic Records, including the rerecords and her albums Lover, Folklore, Evermore, Midnights, and The Tortured Poets Department.
Swift thanked her fans for their support, particularly in regard to her rerecording effort, in her letter on Friday.
“The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned The Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music,” Swift said.
Read More: Here’s Why Taylor Swift Is Re-Releasing Her Old Albums
Fans have been excitedly waiting for Swift to release the rerecordings of her two remaining early albums: her self-titled debut album and Reputation. In the letter, Swift preempted fans’ questions about the status of the projects, revealing that she hasn’t rerecorded even a quarter of Reputation.
“The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it,” Swift said. “To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off.”
Swift said that “there will be a time (if you’re into the idea)” for her to release the “vault tracks,” or unreleased songs, from the album. She added that she has already finished rerecording her debut album.
“Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about,” Swift said. “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.”
How much was the deal for?
Swift didn’t disclose the terms of her deal to purchase her masters. Billboard and Variety both reported, citing unnamed sources, that the singer paid a sum similar to what Shamrock bought them for years earlier.
That amount has also never been publicly disclosed, but The New York Times reported that a source with knowledge of the deal said it was more than $300 million.
Is Taylor Swift still a billionaire?
Forbes first labeled Swift a billionaire in October 2023, in large part because of the success of her record-breaking Eras Tour and her music catalog.
Last October, the business magazine updated its estimation of her net worth to $1.6 billion. That estimate remained unchanged on Forbes’s website as of Friday afternoon.
Swift’s ownership of her own creative work is factored into her estimated net worth, which is measured by subtracting a person’s liabilities from the value of their assets, including not only money they have in the bank but also anything else they own, such as real estate and business holdings and—in the pop superstar’s case—music.
Read the full article here
