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In one of the more dramatic business developments in pop music history, Taylor Swift has purchased her catalog of recordings that were initially released through Big Machine Records, after six years of transfers and turmoil. She acquired those six albums and associated visuals from their most recent owner, Shamrock Capital, for an undisclosed nine-figure sum, a price tag that is being characterized by Swift as exceptionally fair and reasonable.
Swift wrote in a handwritten letter to fans, “To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.” Thanking the company that sold the rights to her, she added, “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. I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. … My first tattoo just might be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
The singer will be reissuing her old Big Machine albums, which were first sold by Big Machine against her wishes in 2019,. But now there will be two fully authorized versions of each of those albums in the marketplace, since she’s saying the re-recorded “Taylor’s Versions” will continue to be available alongside the originals. Two of those bonus-filled editions have yet to come out, including the long-awaited “Reputation (Taylor’s Version),” and her statement declares this deal won’t keep the remaining pair of do-overs from still being released — maybe, since she also makes it clear she’s in no hurry on those now.
News of a possible sale by Shamrock to Swift was first reported by the New York Post, but a source close to the negotiations disavowed elements of that story, saying the price tag reported was grossly inflated, and that there was no involvement of Scooter Braun. His Ithaca Holdings bought the catalog in 2019 before Shamrock acquired it from him a year later; he no longer participates in any profit from a sale, and Swift’s camp is adamant he had no part in Shamrock’s decision to sell.
Said the source close to the sale: “Contrary to a previous false report, there was no outside party who ‘encouraged’ this sale. All rightful credit for this opportunity should go to the partners at Shamrock Capital and Taylor’s Nashville-based management team only. Taylor now owns all of her music, and this moment finally happened in spite of Scooter Braun, not because of him.”
The source added, “The rumored price range that was reported is highly inaccurate.” While no price tag will be publicly forthcoming, insiders say the seller was interested in making a good-faith deal and the ultimate price was far closer to the $300 million Shamrock was reported to have paid in 2020 than the far more extravagant $600-million-to-$1 billion the Post hypothesized in its story.
In his response to the news, Braun kept it sweet and very short in a statement given to Variety: “I am happy for her.”
In her lengthy statement, Swift makes it clear that she has nothing but joyful feelings over how the events of the last six years turned out, since the sale of the masters that embittered her led to the “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings, which directly prompted the concept for the Eras Tour… the record-breaking grosses for which allowed her to buy back her earlier life’s work, as she’d hoped.
Prior to this week, Swift fans were certain an announcement for “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” would be forthcoming on Memorial Day or thereabouts. But for those who still have that as their primary concern, the singer assured fans that her plans to reissue her original albums will not affect plans to put out the final two “Taylor’s Version” editions, the other of which would be a new version of her debut album — though she hedge a bit.
Don’t expect the new “Reputation” or “Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version)” any time soon, she cautioned in the note, even though songs from a partially re-recorded version of the former album have already been licensed for television (most recently appearing in “The Handmaid’s Tale”).
As she explains in her letter: “I know, I know. What about Rep TV? Full transparency. I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it. 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 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 album, and I really love how it sounds now. 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. 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.”
The deal will afford Swift the rights to everything from her albums, music videos and concert specials during that period to artwork and typography, all of which was off-limits to her for the last six years.
Her statement begins: “I’m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just A flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away’ for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was thiiiiis close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. 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 tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get say to say these words:
“All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me.”
She lists off what else that entails: “And all my music videos. All the concert films. The album art and photography. The unreleased. songs. The memories. The magic. The madness. Every single
era. My entire life’s work.”
Swift further writes, “I’m extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans. Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I’m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen. Thank you for being curious about something that used to be thought of as too industry-centric for broad discussion. You’ll never know how much it means to me that you cared. Every single bit of it counted and ended us up here.”
She concludes: “Thanks to you and your goodwill, teamwork and encouragement, the best things that have ever been mine… finally actually are.” She signs off describing herself as “elated and amazed.”
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The long and convoluted saga began nearly six years ago, in the early hours of June 30, 2019, when Braun announced that his Ithaca Holdings had agreed to acquire Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group — and the recorded-music rights to Swift’s first six albums — for around $300 million.
Swift had left Big Machine the previous year at the end of her contract, and aligned with Universal Music Group, Big Machine’s longtime distributor, in a partnership that saw her owning her masters while UMG manufactured, distributed and helped promote her future recordings via the Republic label. In a social media post at the time, she thanked Borchetta “for guiding me through over a decade of work that I will always be so proud of,” but noted, “It’s also incredibly exciting to know that I’ll own all of my master recordings that I make from now on.”
Hours after the sale to Ithaca was announced, Swift slammed it in a long Tumblr post, saying she learned of the deal “as it was announced to the world” — although other sources insisted she would have known of it being discussed at a Big Machine shareholders meeting five days earlier, even if her father, Scott Swift, a shareholder, said he recused himself from the meeting upon learning what was up for discussion. Swift also said that she had attempted to acquire the catalog herself but that Borchetta’s terms were onerous, including a requirement that would require her to stick with Big Machine and get the rights to one past album for every new one she submitted.
The post included a lengthy attack on Braun, who she said bullied her, at times with management clients Justin Bieber and Kanye West. “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,” she said. “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.”
On August 25, less than two months after the Ithaca deal, Swift announced her plan to re-record her first six albums — a move that many other artists, including Def Leppard, had made in an effort to own the rights to recordings of their biggest hits. However, it had never before been done on the scale Swift announced.
The situation escalated in November around the American Music Awards, where Swift was being honored as artist of the decade. She claimed that Braun and Borchetta refused to allow her to use any songs from her back catalog in her performance at the award show, although Big Machine ultimately granted permission.
On Nov. 22, Braun said he and his family had received “numerous death threats” over the situation. “I assume this was not your intention,” he wrote, addressing Swift. “But it is important that you understand that your words carry a tremendous amount of weight and that your message can be interpreted by some in different ways.”
A year later, in November 2020, 17 months after he acquired it, Braun sold the Big Machine catalog — including the rights to Swift’s albums — to Shamrock Holdings. Swift claimed again that she was denied a reasonable opportunity to acquire the catalog herself, saying Braun had demanded a non-disclosure agreement before negotiations could begin. “He would never even quote my team a price,” she wrote. “These master recordings were not for sale to me.”
On April 9, 2021, she released the first of her re-recordings, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” a meticulously re-recorded version of the 2008 album’s 13 songs, with more than a dozen bonus tracks. She has done the same for three other albums, which formed the basis of her blockbuster 2023-24 “Eras” tour — which went on to gross an estimated $2.2 billion — with only “Reputation” and her self-titled debut remaining. It is those versions that get licensed for advertising and film and TV usage. The new owners of Swift’s masters were not able to exploit the older recordings they’d purchases without also getting the secondary approval they needed from the owner of her publishing rights, i.e., Swift herself.
In June of 2021, Braun told Variety that he felt “regret” over the situation. “I regret and it makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” he said. “All of what happened has been very confusing and not based on anything factual.”
While the two continued to trade barbs over the ensuing years, Swift’s re-recordings, combined with the five new albums she has released since leaving Big Machine, have played a huge role in amplifying her already-world-dominating popularity and leading her to billionaire status. But most importantly, the entire feud has taught untold millions of people, especially creatives, about the value of owning one’s work.
(Additional reporting by Jem Aswad)
