Taylor Swift and the chance to buy back her own recordings

In 2019, Scooter Braun bought the master recordings of Taylor Swift's six albums for $300 million, forcing her to re-record them all as "Taylor's version".

Taylor Swift accused Braun - who previously managed Justin Bieber and Kanye West - of being a "bully" and "the very definition of toxic male privilege in the entertainment industry".

A year later, Braun sold the six albums to Shamrock Capital for a profit, but now the company wants to sell them to Taylor Swift. The person who encouraged Shamrock Capital to do so was Braun!

Taylor Swift has the chance to buy back the original recordings of 6 of her own albums

PHOTO: AFP

"What's interesting is that one of the individuals pushing this deal to happen is Scooter Braun, who first worked with Big Machine Records," a source said.

The news comes a day after Swift debuted her first re-recording of Reputation ( Taylor's Version ) on the TV show The Handmaid's Tale .

Swift's hit song Look What You Made Me Do ( Taylor's Version ) appeared during the climax of an episode of the show.

Opportunity for Taylor Swift to buy back the copyright of 6 albums

If the singer decides to buy back her music rights, the price could be between $600 million and $1 billion. Clayton Durant, founder of music consultancy CAD Management, says the price is worth it.

He explained that if Swift owned both the old and new recordings of her songs, she would receive the majority of the publishing royalties from both. She would also have complete control over whether her song catalog was licensed for use in commercials, movies, TV shows, or at political rallies.

"If Swift gets the rights to her original recordings, she'll make a lot more money," Durant told Page Six . "She'll still make money from the original songs, but not as much as she would from Taylor's Versions ."

"When she released the re-recorded version, sales of the original also spiked," he also noted.

In June 2019, Taylor Swift was upset when Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings bought back 6 original albums for more than 300 million USD.

PHOTO: AP

When Swift's original albums went on sale, she claimed she was never offered to buy them and was unaware of the deal.

However, a source told The Blast that the sale "has been discussed with music industry insiders for nearly a year" and is widely known in the industry.

“Swift’s father, a shareholder in Big Machine Records, made $16 million” from the purchase and must have known about it, the source added. Emails sent at the time show that Scott Swift contributed a lot of information to the company that bought the original albums, according to TMZ .

Swift's decision to re-record six albums has sparked industry-wide discussions about artist ownership of their work, how record labels operate, and monetizing songs.

Taylor Swift had no idea that the master recordings from her six albums were being sold. The recordings were purchased by her manager, Scooter Braun, from Big Machine Records, and then sold to Shamrock Capital. So Taylor Swift did not receive any money from the sale of these recordings, even though they brought in $300 million.

According to Reuters , Scooter Braun acquired Big Machine Records in 2019 after Taylor Swift left the label in 2018 to strike a new deal with Universal Music Group. Scooter Braun and the pop star have been embroiled in a bitter dispute since then.

In 2005, when Taylor Swift was 15 years old, she signed her first contract with Big Machine Records, a label co-founded by country music star Toby Keith, in Nashville.

She then signed a contract for six studio albums, becoming the youngest artist ever to sign with Sony/ATV Music Publishing. According to the contract, the six albums, Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), 1989 (2014) and Reputation (2017), were all under the control of Big Machine Records. These six albums were owned by Scooter Braun when he acquired Big Machine Records in June 2019 from founder Scott Borchetta.

When the sale went through in 2019, Taylor Swift spoke out about her frustration with Braun and Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta: "Scooter took away my life's work, something I never had the chance to buy."

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/taylor-swift-va-co-hoi-mua-lai-cac-ban-ghi-am-cua-chinh-minh-185250522084100132.htm