Taylor Swift is the queen of pop and has many accolades to prove it: her Era’s Tour is the highest grossing concert tour of all time, she has 14 Grammys and 58 nominations, and is the female artist with the most charted songs. Her success alone is very impressive, but one thing that has recently made Swift stand out amongst other artists are her re-recorded albums.
In 2019, Taylor Swift left her record label, Big Machine Records, after it was bought from Scott Borchetta by Scooter Braun for $300 million. This was the beginning of a legal battle as Swift found out, with the public, that the master recordings of her first six albums were sold to Scooter Braun. Swift felt betrayed because she already viewed Braun as a bully and would never have willingly sold her masters to him. She attempted to purchase her masters back, but Braun offered “unfavorable conditions,” leaving Swift unable to own the masters to the music that she had spent years creating. Not owning the masters to her music meant that Swift had no control over how her music was played, copied, or distributed. She was also not allowed to play her own songs live. Although Braun had nothing to do with the creative process of Swift’s songs, he now had complete control over them.
Taylor expressed her frustration toward Braun and Borchetta through Tumblr posts and asked her fans for help by encouraging them to “Please let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel about this.” In response to these posts, Kelly Clarkson provided Swift with some advice. She suggested that Swift re-record the songs that she did not own the masters to, create new album art, and create an incentive so people would buy the new version. Clarkson claimed that she herself would buy all the new versions “just to prove a point.” Taylor Swift did exactly that.
In August of 2019, Swift announced on Good Morning America that she would be re-recording all of the albums that she did not own the masters to. She added “(Taylor’s Version)” to the end of all of her album and song titles and encouraged people to stop supporting the original versions and only stream and purchase the new recordings. She also provided an incentive for her fans to exclusively support the re-recorded albums. With each re-release, she includes songs that she describes as “from the vault.” These are songs that she wrote at the time of the original release, but did not make the final album. Since she had created a loyal fan base of “Swifties” over the years, this project has been very successful.
Because of her loyal fanbase and the new features of the re-recorded albums, Swift has greatly decreased the value of Braun’s $300 million investment. Although this has ultimately worked out positively for Swift, should this whole legal situation have been allowed in the first place? Why should other people be allowed to own the creative work of another artist? Scooter Braun took complete control of the songs Swift had written about her own life and she had no say in the matter. Her consent was not required for the purchase and she was taken advantage of because of this. Swift tried to spread awareness about the dispute she had been in so that other artists could avoid similar situations, but maybe music artists should be better protected so that their art is not stolen by other people.
