Taylor Swift buys back early albums after yearslong crusade

By Ashley Carman

Superstar singer-songwriter Taylor Swift re-acquired the rights to her first six albums, ending a long campaign to gain control of the music from her early years.

The deal announced on her website Friday marks the end of a battle between Swift, her former record label Big Machine Label Group, music manager Scooter Braun and the private equity firm Shamrock Capital, which had acquired the albums. After losing control of the master recordings of her earlier work, the singer re-recorded some of the songs in an effort to undercut the originals’ popularity.

“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually to be pretty reserved about it,” she wrote in the statement. “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.”

While Swift wrote the songs on her first six albums, Big Machine owned the actual recordings that made her famous. The label sold those to Braun’s Ithaca Holdings LLC in June 2019, as part of a larger deal. After Swift spoke out about her lack of approval of the deal, Ithaca Holdings sold those rights to Shamrock for about $300 million.

“We are thrilled with this outcome and so happy for Taylor!,” Shamrock posted on its Linkedin page. “I am happy for her,” Braun said in a separate statement Friday.

Swift’s re-recordings, dubbed “Taylor’s Version,” were massively successful and gave her fans the choice to side with her in a battle over the rights to her songs. She didn’t share how much she paid to obtain ownership in this new deal.

The singer said she now controls all of her life’s work, including photography, album art, videos and unreleased songs.

“I’m extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans,” she wrote. “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.”