Look what you made her do.
Taylor Swift, in a move to end a long-running battle over who owns her music, announced Friday that she has bought back the rights to her first six albums.
“All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me,” the Karma singer wrote, announcing the news on her official website. “I’ve been bursting into tears of joy … ever since I found out this is really happening.”
Swift originally lost the rights to her entire catalogue of music in 2019 when her first record label, Big Machine, sold them to music producer Scooter Braun. It kicked off a feud between the singer and Braun, the latter of whom has fallen from grace in the music industry as a result.
In November 2020, Braun turned around and sold the master recordings to the private equity firm Shamrock Capital for a reported US$300 million.
As a result, Swift announced that she would re-record her albums to own her new masters in a project called Taylor’s Version.
Her first re-recorded album, Fearless (Taylor’s Version), came out in April 2021, and she has since released new versions of Red, 1989 and Speak Now.
It was a gamble that has paid off for the singer-songwriter — all of the releases have gone to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and she has inspired other singers to attempt to regain control of their own master recordings.
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Now that she owns all of her original work, Swift also hinted at what’s to come — specifically addressing the long-awaited, highly anticipated release of Reputation (Taylor’s Version), which has had Swifties salivating since the conclusion of her record-breaking Eras Tour.
“I know, I know. What about Rep TV? Full transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it,” she wrote in the update posted to her website Friday.
“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. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief.
“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 the photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased vault tracks from that album to hatch. I’ve already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now,” she continued, adding that “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.”
In June of 2024, Braun announced that he was retiring from music management.
In his statement, Braun mentioned a number of his clients from over the years, but not Swift: Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Andrew Watt, Lil Dicky, Tori Kelly, J Balvin, Demi Lovato, Zac Brown Band, Martin Garrix, David Guetta, Steve Angello, Carly Rae Jepsen, PSY and Quavo among them.
Many of the artists he listed had dropped Braun as a manager by that time.
“Every client I have had the privilege of working with has changed my life, and I know many of them are just beginning to see the success they deserve,” he said. “I will cheer for every single one of them.”
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