Taylor Swift has bought back her master recordings. She made the announcement with a note on her website, sharing happily, “All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me.” It’s the first time she has every owned the rights to all of her own music.
Infamously, in 2019, Scooter Braun’s media holding company, Ithaca Holdings LLC, acquired Big Machine Label Group. With that acquisition came the rights to Swift’s first six studio albums. Swift denounced the acquisition and criticized Braun and his “bullying.” She also said, “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.”
Following the acquisition, Swift—who left Big Machine Label Group in 2018 to sign a deal with Universal Music Group—pledged to re-record her albums so that she could own the new master recordings. She made it two-thirds of the way through, releasing new editions of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989. According to her announcement, she finished the new version of her self-titled debut, but is not yet sure when it could be released. She also said she did not yet finish re-recording Reputation—a re-recorded album that was widely expected to come out soon due to her previewing of “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version).”
Before Swift released any of her Taylor’s Version albums, however, Braun and his company sold the musician’s masters to the Los Angeles investment firm Shamrock Capitol. At the time of the acquisition, Shamrock said, “Taylor Swift is a transcendent artist with a timeless catalog. We made this investment because we believe in the immense value and opportunity that comes with her work.”
In her statement today, Swift thanked “everyone at 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.”
