(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Taylor Swift buys back her early master recordings [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-31
Having multiple versions of the same music is not necessarily a problem, just ask Anton Bruckner. Or, much more recently, Taylor Swift. The billionaire pop superstar is said to have spent a billion dollars to buy back the master recordings of her first six albums, four of which she later rerecorded as new versions.
Swift recorded those first six albums before she joined Universal Music Group (UMG) in 2018. At that point in her career, she had gained enough clout to ask for certain conditions she would not have asked for when she was struggling to get her foot in the door.
One of those conditions was that she would retain ownership of the master recordings she made with UMG. Clearly, master recordings are important to her. Yesterday, she posted on Instagram photos of herself with the LPs of her first six albums, with the caption “You belong with me [six heart emoji of different colors] Letter on my site :)”
I admit I don’t know much about Taylor Swift besides what I see on the news and the late night comics. I had been vaguely aware of “Taylor’s versions” but had no idea what was the reason for those to exist in the first place. Laura Snapes for the Guardian does a good job of explaining the background.
Taylor Swift has bought back the master recordings to her first six albums, giving her control over her entire catalogue for the first time. ... She originally lost the rights in 2019 when her first record label, Big Machine, sold them to music executive Scooter Braun. Swift described the sale to Braun as her “worst case scenario”, and said she had not been given the opportunity to buy her work outright, but to “earn” one album back for each new album she recorded for the label. Her subsequent albums, from 2019’s Lover onwards, were released on Republic, with Swift retaining the rights to the master recordings. Braun at one time managed Kanye West, who repeatedly targeted Swift after he infamously invaded her acceptance speech at the 2009 VMA awards. In November 2020, Braun sold the master recordings to the private equity firm Shamrock Capital in November for a reported $300m. In a letter to fans [link added] posted today [May 30, 2025], Swift said that she bought her masters – as well as her videos, concert films, album art and photography and unreleased songs – back from Shamrock [Capital]. ... [...] “I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. ... 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. I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
That part about the tattoo is just a joke, right? She might want to talk to Pete Davidson about that.
In order to regain control over her catalogue after the original sale to Braun – and to devalue his investment – Swift embarked on a project to rerecord all six albums, branding each one “(Taylor’s Version)” and adding “From the Vault” tracks from the original songwriting sessions that hadn’t made it on to the original albums. Between 2021 and 2023, Swift rerecorded her albums Fearless (originally released in 2008), Red (2012), Speak Now (2010) and 1989 (2014).
That accounts for four of the six, leaving Taylor Swift (her début album, 2006) and reputation (2017) without a Taylor’s Version. Swift has not ruled out rerecording and releasing those two albums, writing that she has actually rerecorded her début album and loves how it sounds. She states that the releases will depend in part on what her fans want, but the hurdle might be higher for reputation.
“I know, I know. What about Rep TV?” she wrote, calling the [hypothetical] record by its fan nickname. “Full transparency: I haven’t even rerecorded 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.” Reputation – which Swift recently called a “goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure” – was born of a time when her public image had tanked in the wake of a feud with Kanye West and accusations of overexposure. “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 six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off.”
The reporter notes that “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” from the hypothetical reputation (Taylor’s Version) appeared in an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. The success of the Taylor’s Version albums led to the Eras tour, which made Taylor Swift into a bona fide billionaire, as opposed to a fake billionaire. Whoever said Taylor Swift is no longer hot needs to take a full cognitive test, for starters.
Swift is grateful to see the next generation of pop superstars demanding and getting ownership of master recordings in their contracts. The Guardian report closes with a quotation from Swift’s letter, and I think that’s appropriate here as well.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/31/2325244/-Taylor-Swift-buys-back-her-early-master-recordings?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
