Taylor Swift’s Legal Battle for the Ownership of her Master Recordings: A Music Copyright Debacle that Illustrates the Power of Social Media Amidst Legal Proceedings
Taylor Swift has always been great at what she does: sonically expressing her ideas, thoughts, and emotions in an ultra-relatable way. Since the early days of her career, Swift has evolved both as a person and an artist, but her method hasn’t changed. From the very beginning, the lyrics she wrote told the stories of her experiences, and for her many listeners across the globe, growing up hearing each of her albums felt similar to reading letters of advice written by an older sister. Since releasing her first studio album in 2006, Swift has vulnerably shared both moments of success and struggle. Over a decade later, she continues to maintain this transparency with her fans in all facets of her professional career.
At the age of 14, Swift moved from her home in Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee to pursue a career as a songwriter. In 2006 Swift signed a record deal with Scott Borchetta’s new label “Big Machine Records” in which she “agreed to give Big Machine the rights to her first six albums in exchange for a cash advance” (Taylor Swift Masters Controversy 2021). While signed with Big Machine Records, Swift released several record-breaking albums and quickly became a name known around the world. Swift’s debut, self-titled album Taylor Swift was released in 2006. In 2008, Swift released her second studio album Fearless which was awarded “Album of the Year” at the 2009 Country Music Awards and 2010 Grammy Awards. Following Fearless came Speak Now in 2010 and Red in 2012. In 2014, Swift released her 80’s synth pop influenced 1989 which was also awarded “Album of the Year” at the 2016 Grammy Awards, making Swift one of only two female solo artists to win the award twice. Each new installment to her discography proved more groundbreaking and far-reaching than the last, and both the amount of “Swifties” and awards were accumulating exponentially (Toia, 2018).
In November 2018, Swift’s contract with Big Machine Label Group expired (Taylor Swift Masters Controversy 2021) and on November 19th, 2018, Swift announced on social media to her fans and followers that she had signed a multi-album recording with Universal Music Group and Republic Records (Swift, 2018). In this post, she explained that one element of her contract with Republic Records required that “any sale of their Spotify shares result in a distribution of money to their other artists, non-recoupable” (Swift, 2018). This is not the first time Swift has played an active role in preserving the rights of recording artists who release music to streaming services. In 2015, Swift wrote a letter to Apple Music which ultimately resulted in Apple paying royalties to artists during their 3-month trial period, and she returned to Spotify in 2017 after originally pulling her music off of the service in 2014 (Britton, 2018). Upon announcement, the founder and CEO of Republic Records said that he was “beyond thrilled to create an alliance with Republic Records and the incomparable Taylor Swift (Newman, 2018)”. This new contract offers Swift much more control over her music than her past contract with Big Machine Records. However, her original recording contract continues to have implications on the status of her work.
On June 30th, 2019, Big Machine Label Group announced that they were acquired by Scooter Braun and his company Ithaca Holdings. The acquisition was financed by several private equity firms, including The Carlyle Group (Taylor Swift Masters Controversy 2021). Included in this acquisition was the masters of Swift’s first six studio albums, which meant that Braun and Ithaca Holdings obtained control of all of the copies, both physical and digital, of Swift’s music. Swift denounced this acquisition on social media soon after the news broke to airwaves. In a tumblr post, Swift expressed her distaste for the business deal:
“For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past.” (Swift, 2019)
This marked the first time that Swift explained the details of her recording contract situation to the public. In her tumblr post, Swift says that she was made aware of Braun’s acquisition of her music at the same time as the rest of the world. She references incidents through the years in which Braun was “manipulative” and “incessant” towards her, citing altercations that involved Braun alongside his clients. Additionally, Swift highlights that she was not “given an opportunity” to purchase her masters (Swift, 2019). She then reflected on how she ended up in the situation: “This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it” (Swift, 2019). Swift, clearly speaking with passion here, highlights the implications that can come with signing to a record label at a young age. It can be difficult for young artists that are new to the industry to foresee how their career will evolve as well as anticipate how the contract they sign will potentially inhibit their ability to own their work in the future.
When Swift signed her first record deal in 2006, the landscape of the music industry was very different than it is today. According to Tim Ingham from Music Business Worldwide, “the idea of a record company signing a new artist today and locking down all of their master recordings to copyrights in perpetuity is far less common” (Glynn, 2019). Though in recent years artists are able to infiltrate the new-music scene via music streaming platforms and social media, the industry that Swift emerged into in 2005 relied heavily on radio. Ingham goes on to explain, “you needed a record company backing to get you on radio, particularly country radio in Nashville, where Big Machine was a huge player…you needed to rely on physical distribution to get your CDs into stores" (Glynn, 2019). For Swift and other artists coming on to the scene at that time, there was not an accessible alternative way to launch a music career without signing to a record label.
In response to Swift’s June 30th tumblr post, Scott Borchetta took to Big Machine Label Group’s website to publish a blog post titled “So, It’s Time For Some Truth”. In this blog post, Borchetta posts an image of the Big Machine Label Group’s response to Swift’s 2018 proposal as well as alleged text messages between himself and Swift (text message authenticity has not been verified). In the BMLG responses to Swift’s proposals, it can be seen that Swift requested a seven-year contract and that the ownership of all her past audio-visual works would be passed to her at the end of the contract. Borchetta agreed to those terms, however he responded with a request for a ten-year contract (Borchetta, 2019). The conflict between Swift and Big Machine Label Group continued beyond these posts; in a separate statement from BMLG, the record label group claimed that there was admittance from Swift that she owed “millions of dollars and multiple assets to our company,” to which her publicist responded on Twitter saying that BMLG actually owed Swift $7.9 million in unpaid royalties (Meiselman, 2019). Months later, fans and followers continued to have a front seat to witness the interactions between Swift and her past record label via social media.
In August 2019, Swift performed in Central Park at Good Morning America the day before the release of her seventh studio album Lover (the first album that she released under Republic Records). After her performance, she spoke to Robin Roberts and announced that as of November 2020, she would legally be permitted to begin re-recording her first five studio albums (Andrews, 2020). When evaluating legal ownership of music, there are two separate types of copyright involved: the copyright for the musical arrangement and lyrics of a song (its composition), and copyright for the recording itself. According to the president of the National Music Publishers Association David Israelite, “the copyright for the song is compensated completely separately from the compensation for the song recording” (Andrews, 2020). Because Swift writes all of her music, she still owns the composition rights to her music and thus would able to go through the re-recording process without difficulty.
Despite the positive news that Swift would eventually have the opportunity to re-record her music, she continued to face legal obstacles through 2019 and 2020. One year after Swift’s initial post announcing her new record deal with Republic Records, she came back on to social media to explain to how her situation with Big Machine Label Group was continuing to inhibit her. In a post titled “Don’t know what else to do” from November 2019, Swift explains that she would be receiving the Artist of the Decade award at the American Music Awards and also that she was working with Netflix on a biographic documentary about her experiences… both of which were projects that had been on hold because of her legal battle over her music. In the post she writes that she had been planning “to perform a medley of [her] hits throughout the decade... Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun [had] … said that [she was] not allowed to perform [her] old songs on television because they claim that would be re-recording [her] music before [she is] allowed to next year” (Swift, 2019). In regards to the Netflix documentary, she explained that Borchetta and Braun also “declined the use of [her] older music or performance footage” for the project and that Borchetta told her team that she would be permitted to use the music only if she would “agree to not re-record copycat versions of [her] songs” which is something she legally is allowed to do and is “looking forward to” (Swift, 2019). This shed light on an interesting element of the legality of the situation; though Swift should have the right to perform her songs because she is in ownership of their compositions, adding the element of a televised, recorded show makes the situation less black-and-white. At the end of her post, Swift asks her followers to “please let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how [they] feel” (Swift, 2019), and that they did.
This call to action proved to be very effective – Swift’s fans expressed their support of Swift on Twitter and across other social media platforms with the use of the trending #IStandWithTaylor hashtag. Soon after, Big Machine Label Group released a statement saying that they “agreed to grant all licenses of their artists' performances to stream post show and for re-broadcast on mutually approved platforms" despite their original rejection of Swift’s claim (BMLG, 2019). Thus, Swift’s transparency on social media ultimately aided her in gaining permission to perform her planned set at American Music Awards and to continue moving forward on the Netflix documentary Miss Americana.
Swift’s performance at the American Music Awards was an ode to her career through the past decade and it included some of her main hits from her first six albums, including two songs from her newly-released Lover album. Swift has always been one to use her music to share her feelings about her life experience… and she began her set at the AMA’s by gracefully making a musical statement about her legal fight. She sang a portion of her song “The Man”, a female-empowerment pop ballad from her Lover album while wearing an oversized shirt that had the names of her first six studio albums written in a jail-like font. She then removed the shirt to reveal a glittery outfit…. and then proceeded to sing some of the songs that she had to fight to use including “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “Shake It Off”. Though Swift was still struggling to obtain ownership of her masters, it was clear that she would do what she could to hold on to the songs that skyrocketed her into stardom and connected her to fans around the world.
In October 2020, Swift’s discography once again got passed into another person’s hands… and still not her own. According to Variety, Braun sold her masters along with videos and artworks for (reportedly) $300 million to Shamrock Holdings (Halperin, 2020). Swift claimed in a post that she was offered an opportunity to purchase back her catalog with the requirement that she signs an NDA stating that she “would never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive”, before even having the opportunity to “look at the financial records of BMLG” (Swift, 2020). She explained that her lawyers found this to be a very strange NDA and they claimed to have only heard of in the case of an attempt to “silence an assault accuser by paying them off” (Swift, 2020). She was unable to place a bid on her work and also unable to receive a quote from Braun while also being asked to sign a document that would prevent her from doing what had been helping her through this entire process: sharing it with the world. When Shamrock Holdings acquired her music she was initially hopeful that she would be given the opportunity to purchase back her masters, only to find out that Braun would still continue to be involved and make a profit (Swift, 2020). Thus, Swift did not take them up on their offer. Instead, she shared that she had already begun the “exciting and creatively fulfilling” (Swift, 2020) process of re-recording her music.
This course of events illustrated the powerful ways in which social media has re-shaped the industry and musical legality issues. The issue of master ownership is not a new one for recording artists; Swift is in the company of Prince, the Beatles, Janet Jackson and others who had conflicts with their record labels about ownership rights (Taylor Swift Masters Controversy 2021). However, Swift’s response to the situation is what makes her actions trailblazing ones; before her, these legality debacles were not discussed in public. As explained by Mark Sutherland, editor of trade publication Music Week, “a few years ago, none of this Taylor Swift story would've played out in public…there would've been some legal letters flying around in the background and we'd probably have never heard of it” (Glynn, 2019). This notion is also echoed by music lawyer James Sammataro that expressed that “this is stuff that never leaks out to the public… but this is like negotiation in the Instagram age. Taylor is directing it. She is forcing this chess game to be played in public” (Rushe, 2019). By presenting the situation to her fans and millions of followers each step of the way, Swift not only secured support through the #IStandWithTaylor hashtag but also shed light on an important issue that has the potential to affects many young artists. Coined as “one of the 50 most important moments of the music industry” in the 2010s decade by Rolling Stone, Swift’s dispute over her masters “hinted at a change in the digital music era, where artists are more informed of their ownership and would not rely on record labels for marketing as heavily as in the past” (Taylor Swift Masters Controversy 2021). Swift has been a role model many people for many years and for many reasons, but the way in which she dealt with her masters ownership debacle will be an important facet of her legacy and moment of hopefulness in recording artist history.
As of November 2020, Swift has been permitted to re-record her first six studio albums. In February 2021 she announced that the re-recording of her Grammy Album of the Year winning Fearless would be released in April. When it was released, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) included the original 19 tracks from the deluxe album along with an additional six never-before-heard tracks “from the vault”: songs written over a decade ago that did not make it onto the original album. Swift’s decision to re-record her albums was a unique one, and some critics were anticipating that it might be a toss-up of which version users choose to listen to. However, the response to Fearless (Taylor’s Version) tells a different story: the re-recorded album received wide-spread praise and topped the Billboard 200 debuting at Number 1 (Iasimone, 2021). Additionally, with the release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift broke a record previously held for 54 years by the Beatles: she has set the new “all-time mark for the fastest accumulation of three No. 1 albums, reaching the target in just 259 days from Folkore (on July 31), to Evermore (Dec.18) and now Fearless (Taylor's Version)” (Lars, 2021). These chart statistics say it all; despite losing the ownership of her diary entry-esque biographical music catalog, Swift has not lost her talent, her ability to tell a story, or her connection to fans around the world.
On April 18th Swift tweeted that she has already “been in the studio all day recording the next one” (Swift, 2021). As Swift continues to release re-recorded albums, she will have the ability to accept deals from brands, and production companies who wish to use her music in commercials, film, and television. Swift’s response to the sale of her masters illustrated how much her musical work means to her; this was not just about how many units she would’ve continued to sell or how it affected her bottom line. Instead, Swift showcased that as an artist, she has the ability tp refuse to remain silent, to reject underserving offers, and to find a way to interpret music copyright law so that she can continue to do what she loves. The most paramount takeaway from Swift’s experience is perfectly articulated at the conclusion of her tumblr post: “…hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make” (Swift, 2019).
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