Swifties rejoice – as of May 2025, Taylor Swift announced that she has bought back the rights to all six of her first albums. The debate over Taylor Swift’s master recordings was one of the most visible in music, sparking questions that reverberate today about creative ownership, the treatment of artists in the industry, and control over a catalogue that has changed the landscape of pop music.
What Taylor Swift Owns Today
As of today, Taylor Swift is the owner of all of her master recordings. This includes her debut record, Taylor Swift (2006), up through the most recent Life of a Showgirl (2025). She was able to buy back her first six albums when they were acquired by Shamrock Capital in May 2025 in a deal reportedly worth around $360 million. All of the album masters released under her current label, Republic Records/UMG, are also fully owned by Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift’s albums have been released on different record labels, with different creative teams over the course of her career. However, Taylor Swift has always maintained the majority of control over her songwriting rights. While she has worked with other songwriters, including frequent collaborators Jack Antonoff, Max Martin, Shellback, Ryan Tedder, Aaron Dessner, Liz Rose, as well as other artists like Florence Welch, Ed Sheeran, and even Zoe Kravitz, she has kept a controlling stake in her songwriting rights since the beginning.
For instance, on her 2010 album Speak Now, Taylor Swift is the only credited songwriter for all 14 songs, including the vault tracks. She is also the sole credited songwriter on 67 of her other works, including “Our Song”, “Should’ve Said No”, “Fifteen”, “Love Story”, “Holy Ground”, “Cornelia Street”, “Clean”, “My Tears Ricochet”, and more.
What She Didn’t Own at the Start of Her Career
The albums that were in the Taylor Swift masters dispute were all of her catalogue released under her first record deal with Big Machine. These six albums included her self-titled debut, Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), 1989 (2014), and Reputation (2017).
Only the master recordings, and not the publishing rights, were involved in the dispute over these albums. The master recordings of the songs on these albums were financed and owned by the record label, and not the artist. They were then sold by Scott Borchetta to Scooter Braun in a deal that the singer disapproved of, and took steps to remedy by re-recording the entirety of the first half of her catalogue, which resulted in the Taylor’s Version re-releases.
Understanding Music Ownership: Masters vs. Publishing
Understanding the scope of Taylor Swift’s decision to re-record and re-release her own music means breaking down a little of how the music industry works. Control over master recordings has long been a topic of conversation, with other artists like Prince, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Cher, and more all taking steps to regain full control and ownership of their earliest work.
What Are Master Recordings?
The master recording is the ownership of the actual recorded track of music. It encompasses the audio version of the performance that is released. Because of this, there may be several different master recordings associated with one song.
You might be wondering why royalties are divided up this way. It seems overly complicated at first, but consider a recording made in the studio vs. a live performance recording. You could listen to the studio version of a song on Spotify, as well as find a performance of the same song recorded while the artist was on tour.
While the artist is the same and the songwriting is the same, there are two separate audio masters involved in this scenario, and hence two different assets. Each comes with its own set of owners, rights, and market value. Both of these values are distinct from the rights and royalties associated with the live performance itself, as well as the act of writing the song in the first place, and capturing the value of all of these different skill sets in music is how royalties became such a dense topic.
One more important thing to know is that record labels are frequently the owners of master recordings, and not the artists themselves. The studio will offer the initial financing to create the master, such as paying for studio time, hiring musicians, and paying producers. Because of this investment, they keep ownership in the master. This is especially common for artists who are just starting out, which is why so many established stars then seek to regain control over their earlier performances. Doing so is often difficult not only because of contract terms, but also because master recordings can grow in value as an artist’s career gains momentum. Catalogs of established artists’ master recordings can be multi-million dollar assets.
What Are Publishing Rights?
Publishing rights are the songwriter’s rights in the music industry. Writing a song does not necessarily mean recording, arranging, and performing every element of the song. However, the song still would not exist without the songwriter’s original music and lyrics. Because of this, the songwriter keeps a separate stream of revenue and control over the work, called publishing rights.
How Revenue Flows From Each Channel
Publishing rights are invoked whenever the song is reproduced, re-recorded, distributed, or performed. For instance, if another artist wants to cover your song, the songwriter receives a payment and must consent to the song being licensed.
Master recordings, however, can be much more lucrative, because they involve payment any time the master recording is played. Think of all the times you’ve heard Taylor Swift’s first version of Love Story on the radio, in the mall, in a movie, or hit play yourself on Spotify. Every time the master recording has been in use, the owner must be paid out.
One final detail: if you are an independent artist who writes your own songs and releases them without a label, then you own 200% of your own rights from the outset. You own 100% of the publishing (songwriting), as well as 100% of the master. These are two valuable assets to be protected.
Why Master Ownership Is So Powerful
Master ownership can not only involve higher and more frequent payments to creatives, but also creative control. If another party owns your likeness in the form of your audio performance, they can license it to be used however they want. Your song can be put into a movie or tv show that you disagree with, used to underscore an advertisement you don’t support, used to train AI performers to replace you, and more.
Additionally, many artists put real emotion and raw moments into their audio recordings. That performance is then owned, controlled, and monetized by a separate entity when an artist does not maintain control over their masters.
Taylor Swift’s Original Record Deal
Did Taylor Swift sign a bad deal? Not necessarily. The singer signed with a label at 15 years old in a contract that gave the label ownership over her first 6 albums. The decision did propel her to stardom, and also gave her funding and a platform for her earliest work. However, the deal ended up disadvantageous when the singer claimed that she was offered a renewal contract with the option to “earn back” her earlier work by continually releasing new albums.
Her Contract With Big Machine Records
It’s interesting to note that Big Machine Records was a startup label at the time that they signed Taylor Swift. Launched by Scott Borchetta in 2005, Taylor Swift became the new company’s first major artist when her self-titled debut in 2006 took off. Because of this, it was remarkable that the label offered to finance six albums for the then-unknown child songwriter, let alone that they were then unwilling to negotiate with the artist who made them both famous.
How Traditional Label Deals Allocate Ownership
Understanding what kind of deal is being offered by a label is key to long-term success in the industry. Most labels require artists to assign their master rights to the label, or even classify songs as “work for hire”, in order to control how they are used and monetized. It is traditional for a label to offer some kind of reversion clause, meaning that at some point control over the art will be returned to the artist, but this is often not before a period of 35 years, meaning that the label will own the work for most or all of its valuable lifetime. Complete reversion is also not necessarily often on the table, with many labels retaining a financial stake even after the 35 year period has ended.
Labels will offer an advance for recording costs, but this must often be repaid from an artist’s own royalty share (typically 10 to 20%) before they receive additional payment from their work. Critics have pointed out that labels in this way may offer start-up funding, but do not actually “cover the costs” themselves of recordings in the long term. Because of this recoupment clause, many artists end up in debt, financing their own work even after being signed to a label. Labels may also take around 10 to 25% of ancillary revenue streams from merch, touring, and brand sponsorships, reducing the amount that artists can earn back money from their work.
Why Young Artists Rarely Own Their Masters
With all of these facts in place, why would a young artist sign with a label? The fact of the matter is that it can cost thousands of dollars to make a finished song that is “radio-ready” and competitive in the industry, let alone a full album. Many young artists do not know how to make a polished audio product on their own or are unable to afford to do so without label backing.
Even those who can self-record and perform all the musical elements themselves (or who can afford to hire studio engineers and musicians) still face the problem of getting heard. Many labels still offer unparalleled industry access, including a team working to market and promote music on the artist’s behalf. Sync and TV connections, radio airplay, playlisting, consideration for press and promo, brand deals, and all of the elements involved in making a career still can come from label backing, meaning that many young artists in the mainstream will not own their initial masters.
The Sale of Taylor Swift’s Masters and the Public Dispute
Even those who were not familiar with the inner workings of the music industry learned the term “master recording” during the uproar over Taylor Swift’s albums being sold to Scooter Braun. The controversy came in part over the way that the label had structured her contract, as well as partially due to interpersonal conflict between the major players.
Big Machine’s Sale to Scooter Braun
In June 2019, Big Machine was sold to Scott Borchetta’s company, Ithaca Holdings LLC, in a deal valued at upwards of $300 million. This sale included the master recordings for Taylor Swift’s first six albums as well as the company’s current artist roster and publishing.
Taylor Swift had already signed a deal with Republic Records/Universal Music Group in 2018, leaving the label. She made a point of highlighting that her reason for joining Republic/UMG was due to the offer that the label gave her of full ownership of her own masters moving forward.
Why the Sale Sparked Controversy
Initially, the controversy sprang from a Tumblr post that the singer wrote upon learning of the sale of her catalogue. Taylor Swift wrote directly to fans using the same medium that she used in the earliest days of her career. Her issue with the sale was twofold – at first, she called out the unfair structure of the label deal she signed, saying she was not given a fair opportunity to buy her own master recording rights. She wrote, “For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead, I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in.”
The singer then went on to call out Scooter Braun personally, saying: “I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years… Now, Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
Her conflict with Braun is rooted in the earlier clash the artist had with Kim Kardashian over leaked and possibly manipulated phone call data, Kanye West’s revenge porn music video using an image of her naked body, and Braun’s alleged role in using his celebrity clients to stoke the flames. The interpersonal side of the controversy grew exponentially as different artists came to defend both sides on social media. Braun’s clients, like Demi Lovato and Justin Bieber, defended their manager, whereas others, like Halsey and Selena Gomez, took Taylor Swift’s side.
Artist Control vs. Label Investment
The conversation wasn’t all about Scooter vs. Taylor. The outrage was also rooted in understanding how little artists control the work that audiences associate with them. Taylor Swift wrote about the sale of her masters, “I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.” Audiences connected with Taylor Swift’s emotional plea, since they connected the songs with her as an artist. Meanwhile, she shone a light on how artists are forced to pay back the recording costs that labels offer them, pointing out the unfairness of ongoing label control of artists’ work long after they have more than recovered their investment.
The Re-Recording Strategy: “Taylor’s Version”
Out of this controversy, the “Taylor’s Version” strategy was born. Taylor Swift leveraged her enormous platform to mobilize her fans to her side with the re-release strategy. In February 2021, she announced that she would be re-recording all six of her earliest works and re-releasing the songs as “Taylor’s Versions.”
How Re-Recording Rights Work
The re-records were exact replicas of every element of the initial audio tracks, designed to be indistinguishable from the originals. It was a significant undertaking for an artist to return to music made over 10 years ago and recreate it exactly, from arrangement to performance. Each vocal crack, syllabic timing, and even subtle performance decisions from 2006 onwards had to be as similar as possible for the re-records to work. Meanwhile, fans had to be convinced to repurchase music that they already owned, and to redownload and stream new versions of Taylor Swift’s songs instead of the ones they themselves had grown up with.
Making the re-recording created a market competitor for the rights of each of her earlier songs. Licensing agencies were then faced with the choice of whether they should use “Love Story,” owned by Scooter Braun, or “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)”, owned by Taylor Swift. If the two audio recordings sound identical, it can undercut the value of the first master recording as well as pay out Taylor Swift as the new owner of both publishing and master recording royalties for use of her song.
It also created public pressure for companies to side with Taylor Swift and use her new versions. Taylor Swift also rewarded the fans for their loyalty in streaming and purchasing her new music by including previously unheard “vault tracks” for each of the new releases, adding new music into the deal to reignite interest in her earlier catalogue. This was an especially smart move as the singer had leapfrogged genres several times over the course of these six releases, from country to rock to pop, meaning that there was new ground to be broken as well as new fans to be won over with the original albums.
Why Re-Recording Was Legally Possible
An interesting element of Taylor Swift’s situation is that had she not been the songwriter on her own music, she might not have been able to re-record her masters. The artist has perhaps the least amount of control in the room over how decisions are made, unless they are also a songwriter and rights holder in that way.
Taylor Swift, the artist, would have had to seek permission from everyone involved in writing her songs to begin the project at all. As it was, Taylor Swift, the songwriter, was in a much more powerful position to empower her artist self to embark on the re-recording strategy.
Commercial and Legal Impact of the Re-Releases
The singer’s fan base proved to be overwhelmingly loyal to her gambit to take back control over her catalogue, with Taylor’s Version re-releases shattering industry records. For instance, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), when it was released in 2023, quickly became the top-selling album of the year with over 1.6 million US units sold in under a week. It also had the largest vinyl sales week measured in the industry since 1991, with 580,000 copies sold.
The re-recordings outperforming the originals devalued her master recordings for their use in licensing and placements, while adding value to the actual songs themselves as they re-surged in popularity.
How This Shifted Negotiating Power in the Industry
The music industry is notorious for ripping off artists, especially Black artists, who then have to fight for pennies from the art that they have created. Many famous and industry-changing Black artists have died in debt after being denied ownership of their music, such as DMX, Black Rob, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and Billie Holiday. Prince became famous for writing “slave” on his cheek during his own battle to regain his masters, symbolizing how artists, and especially Black artists in America, were put to work without ever being fairly compensated by labels and agencies.
In this context, Taylor Swift is not the first artist to struggle with this systematic inequality, but she was able to use her platform as one of the most powerful artists in the world to make a visible difference in how the public understands the music industry, as well as how we value songwriters.
How Streaming and Licensing Complicate Ownership
Each master recording and composition has multiple revenue streams. Collecting royalties is a complicated business for any artist, and usually involves registering with different agencies that act on your behalf.
Spotify, Apple Music, and Master Control
Streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music receive master tracks from distributors and must pay negotiated rights for their usage. Taylor Swift famously pulled her entire catalogue off of Spotify from 2014 to 2017 prior to the masters controversy in order to protest the low payouts offered to artists by the platform. Whichever master track does better on streaming is often the only one that fans will engage with, since there would be no reason for them to listen to two identical versions of the same song – unless there is a significant difference, such as a live or acoustic version.
Sync Licensing (Film, TV, Commercials)
Sync licensing involves paying rights holders for the ability to use a song in a visual broadcast, such as a movie, tv show, or commercial. Sync licensing can generate significant ongoing royalties for the licensing of a master track, since every time the show is re-aired, the music rights holder must be compensated.
Performance Rights Organizations and Royalties
Organizations like the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) and SoundExchange collect streaming royalties in the US. Meanwhile, Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC collect publishers’ royalties. A PRO will not collect payments for the use of a master recording, but instead for the songwriters’ rights. Uploading a different master to a distributor does not affect your PRO royalties.
What This Means for Other Artists
Taylor Swift has received plenty of criticism in her career, but she has also paved the way for other artists to negotiate more openly for control over their master recordings. Her fearlessness in speaking up about unfair contract terms and willingness to engage her fans in the fight for control over her own music have helped create more transparency in the industry overall.
Negotiating Master Ownership in Modern Deals
Master ownership is not always on the table for smaller artists working with major labels, but with some independent labels and publishing deals, it may be. Negotiating for master ownership is an important investment in the longevity of your music career.
A music attorney can help you set terms for licensing your rights instead of assigning them outright to a label, or negotiate for swifter or more complete reversion of your master recordings. They may also be able to inform you about limitations of copyright law, such as defining the 35-year rule to terminate agreements.
The Rise of Artist-Friendly Contracts
There may also be flexibility in how revenue vs. ownership is assigned. Modern music deals can agree to profit sharing between an artist and a label instead of traditional royalty assignments. This can help emerging artists retain more of their rights in their work from the outset, instead of having to earn or buy them back later down the line.
Lessons for Emerging Musicians
If the Taylor Swift masters battle has taught newer musicians anything, it’s the importance of maintaining as much ownership as possible in what you create right from the outset. Your masters may not be for sale for a long period of time once the rights to them have been assigned away. Once they are, you may or may not be in a position to afford them.
It has also shown artists that their fans are their greatest asset when it comes to negotiating terms and changing the power dynamic between labels and creatives – perhaps second only to working with a good entertainment lawyer.
The Legal Takeaway: Why Ownership Structure Matters
Taylor Swift wrote in her Tumblr post about the original sale of her masters, “This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.” This last sentence is perhaps the most important takeaway for young artists looking to protect what they create. Music has real market value as well as personal importance, and protecting that value for yourself is the most important thing that young creators can take away from Taylor Swift’s public battle for her masters.
Long-Term Revenue Implications
The music industry may be struggling to support artists, but it is by no means dead. In fact, a recent study by the RIAA shows that the US music industry has outpaced the overall US economy in recent years when it comes to job growth. The US accounts for one-third of the world’s recorded music revenues and contributes billions of dollars to the economy every year.
What you create as an artist is part of that value and adds to it, even if industry players might do their best to keep the lion’s share of profits. Protecting your art is always a worthwhile investment, as master recordings and publishing rights can continue to pay out royalties long past their initial creation.
Control Over Creative Use
The rise of AI music means that protecting your creative copyright is more important than ever. Take the rise of AI artist Xania Monet, whose creator was signed to a record label in September 2025. The $3 million deal has many artists worried about how their own performances are being used.
Artists like Kehlani and SZA have called out the algorithm for profiting off of vocal performances harvested from real Black women artists who struggle to make a living in the music industry. Meanwhile, fans may confuse Xania Monet, the AI avatar, with human artists like Victoria Monét and Janelle Monáe, both of whom share a soundalike last name with the AI creation.
It remains unclear whether or not the bot was trained on either of these songwriters’ material. However, the resemblance, even if unintentional, is worrying when it comes to protecting those artists’ brand identities.
Protecting Intellectual Property From the Start
While Taylor Swift shows that you can eventually buy back master recordings, it took the biggest pop star in the world years of work, a public outcry, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars, in order to regain complete creative control over her catalogue. The best way is by far to protect your intellectual property rights from the beginning, setting yourself up for lasting success in the music industry. Protecting your IP with copyright registration, trademarked branding, and fairly negotiated contracts is just some of what an entertainment law attorney does every day to help our clients.
A Lawyer Can Help You Protect Your Intellectual Property
You don’t have to be Taylor Swift to see the value in protecting what you create. Get started with The Fried Firm today, an NYC entertainment law firm dedicated to creative problem solving, flexible solutions, and safeguarding emerging and established artists and brands. One of our entertainment law attorneys can help you protect your intellectual property rights from the start.
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