Taylor Swift has recalled the emotional moment she reclaimed her master recordings.
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The singer announced that she had bought back the master recordings to her first six albums in May, revealing that she now has control over her entire catalogue for the first time in her career.
It came after a highly-publicised fight to own them after music manager Scooter Braun and his media holding company, Ithaca Holdings LLC, acquired Swift’s old label, Big Machine Label Group, in 2019.
When news broke of Braun gaining the rights to her masters, Swift, who had made the move to Republic Records by that time, wrote in a Tumblr post that this was “the worst-case scenario” for her, calling him out for his “incessant, manipulative bullying”, and confirming her plans to re-record songs from her first six records in a bid to take control over her music once again.
The story then hit headlines again in late 2020 after Swift confirmed that the ownership of her back catalogue had changed hands again for the second time within two years, when Braun sold the rights to the private equity company Shamrock Holdings in a $300million (£230m) deal. The singer shared a statement at the time, in which she said that the master recordings “were not for sale to me”.
Earlier this year, Swift said that she bought her masters – as well as her videos, concert films, album art and photography and unreleased songs – back from Shamrock.
Now, on an episode of the New Heights podcast, hosted by her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason, she’s recalled the moments she reclaimed ownership of her music. “Since I was a teenager, I’ve been saving up money to buy my music back,” she said. “I thought about not owning my music every day … it was like an intrusive thought.”
Swift explained that it was her mother, Andrea, and her brother, Austin, who negotiated the deal with Shamrock, with Andrea also being the one who broke the news that they’d closed the deal in an emotional phone call.
“She was like, ‘You got your music,’ and I literally hit the floor,” Swift recalled. “Bawling my eyes out, just weeping.”
She went on to say that she then went into another room, where Kelce was obliviously playing video games. “I’m like, ‘Just go tell Travis in a normal way,’” she said, remembering how she cried immediately while trying to share the news.
Swift added that her boyfriend immediately ditched his console and wrapped her in his arms, at which point she started “absolutely heaving.”
“For me, this is not, ‘Oh, I want to own this asset because of its returns, because of the dividends that I will receive over the years,’” Swift said. “I want it because these [are] my handwritten diary entries from my whole life. These are the songs I wrote about every phase of my life. This is my photography, my music videos, most of which I funded. My artwork, everything that I’ve ever done, is in this catalog.”
Braun has since expressed regret about how he handled the situation, saying in 2022: “I learned an important lesson from that. I think a lot of things got lost in translation. I think that when you have a conflict with someone, it’s very hard to resolve it if you’re not willing to have a conversation.”
In July, he said that Swift’s fans have “made the horrible miscalculation that I care” about their anger over him purchasing the singer’s masters and selling them for a profit.
Elsewhere on the podcast, Swift also announced her highly anticipated 12th studio album, ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’. She’s since confirmed the album’s release date, shared its tracklist and announced the producers who worked on the record with her.
Swift also shared that the upcoming record will differ from her previous album – 2024’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ – in that it will not come with additional tracks.
