3 days ago
Taylor Swift's rights drama explained: What happened and why it matters
"You belong with me."
The caption on Taylor Swift's Instagram post the morning of May 30 may have seemed like a simple reference to the hit song off of her second album, the Grammy-dominating Fearless, but to anyone familiar with the artist's love of double meaning and the complicated legal saga that has played out over the last six years, it was anything but.
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The post directed fans to a letter on Swift's official site, which revealed that the rights to her back catalog, spanning from her 2006 self-titled debut to 2017's Reputation, were finally in her possession.
The announcement was major news within the music world, which speaks to Swift's status within the industry — that the resolution of a rights dispute could own a news cycle. But for fans of the singer and for Swift herself, the end of the battle for her musical past represents the grand righting of a wrong that involved some of the most important songs of the last two decades.
The drama began in June 2013, when Scooter Braun — the former manager behind acts like Justin Bieber and (importantly) Kanye West — acquired Big Machine Label Group, the company that had produced Swift's first six albums, and the rights to the recordings. Ownership of her masters had become of particular interest to Swift, who had secured the rights to her future recordings when she signed with Universal Music Group after her contract with Big Machine came to a close with Reputation.
Swift argued that before Braun's company snapped up the rights, she had not been given an opportunity to buy the recordings herself, which is what allowed them to land in the hands of someone she viewed as having personally harmed her with his involvement in her very public issues with both Kayne West and Kim Kardashian.
'Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it,' Swift wrote at the time. 'Now Scooter has stripped me of my life's work, that I wasn't given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.'
Swift's plan to take back control of her music emerged over the next few months. She announced plans to painstakingly rerecord her entire back catalog, which would essentially drain the Braun-owned masters of much of their value. Essentially, fans looking to buy copies of her music would have a choice between a version that was artist approved and one that wasn't. Anyone looking to license the music would similarly be forced to use what would come to be known as "Taylor's Version," as Swift still held onto required approval for usage due to publishing rights.
The first of Swift's Taylor's Versions, Fearless, hit shelves in April 2021 and became an instant sensation thanks to the narrative behind the release and the bevy of bonus material included, namely unreleased songs from the era. New recordings of Red, Speak Now, and, 1989 followed and received similar receptions.
But by the time that Fearless (Taylor's Version) was ready, the rights to Swift's back catalog had already changed hands. About a year and a half after Braun's Ithaca Holdings bought the masters, the company sold them to Shamrock Capital, again without properly giving Swift an opportunity to buy them herself, according to the singer.
And with Shamrock Capital the catalog remained until rumors began to crop up last week that a deal could be approaching that would see Swift take control. That reporting was then confirmed by Swift herself with the social post and lengthy letter expressing gratitude to Shamrock and the relief of having her career history finally under her control.
"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," she wrote. "I will be forever grateful to Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. The way they've handled every interaction we've had has been honest, fair, and respectful. This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it as 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."
"Happy for her,' Braun said in an oh-so-brief statement to The Hollywood Reporter as word of Swift's coup surfaced.
The letter from Swift also clarified what is to become of the rest of the Taylor's Version project now that there isn't an explicit need for two as-yet-unreleased re-records. She revealed that she has completed remaking her debut album and is happy with how the new version sounds, but Reputation (Taylor's Version) is far from finished and may not ever be completed.
"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 wrote. "All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposefully 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."
She did, however, express interest in releasing vault material from Reputation if there's enthusiasm from her fans, which has honestly never been in short supply.
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