Swifters have been going crazy about the re-releases of Taylor’s first albums. A completely new experience with the good old songs they used to sing out loud years ago. But even though this opens up a huge memory box of everyone who has loved the singer since the very beginning, the whole story behind Taylor’s Version is that of deceit and empowerment.
Back when Swift was about 15 years old, she started her music career under Big Machine Records, a label group founded by the executive Scott Borchetta. The initial agreement between the artist and the label was that Big Machine would own the original recordings of her songs, and although this wasn’t very convenient for Taylor, she kept working with them till 2018 when, through her social media accounts, she announced that her new record label would be Universal Music Group.
A year later, the manager of big music stars like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, Scott Braun, bought Big Machine the rights and ownership of a big list of records for an estimate of 300 million dollars, Taylor’s first six albums came included. Needless to say, the singer was not content with that transaction, especially for the fact that her relationship with Braun wasn’t on good terms after, according to her, the manager had bullied her after a fake recording that his former represented, Kanye West, along with Kim K, released to the press. In the alleged recording, that Taylor supposedly knew about, Taylor gave green light to the rapper’s song “Famous,” where he explicitly calls her a b$%ch and attributes to himself Swift’s success.
Besides this, Swift also argued that she had pleaded for the chance to own her work, but since the only way to ‘earn’ it was to literally exchange it for new albums, she finally decided to leave the label behind.
In November 2020, Taylor Swift posted on Twitter about the sale of her music from Scott to Shamrock Holdings, which is a private equity company that, before the deal was closed, reached out to the artist to let her know about it. She, on the same post, also wrote that before this negotiation was happening, she and her legal team had been in touch with Scott Braun to buy back Taylor’s master recordings, but instead of quoting the price of those albums, Braun wanted her to sign a non-disclosure agreement where she would not be allowed to say anything bad about him in the future.
In the end, Swift was advised not to sign the NDA, her first master recordings were sold to Shamrock while Braun could still profit off her music for years to come. In an empowerment movement, she decided to re-record all those albums to claim back the ownership of her music that she’s been fighting for so many years.
Taylor is living a truly happy ending. These re-releases have fans very exciting for all of her fans, and the success of her music and career have continued to rise endlessly.
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