Since the 12th of November, Taylor Swift’s re-release of Red has captivated young people, including many at my school. It is the second of 6 she plans to re-record, and it is even more popular than the original, first released in 2012. It broke the Spotify record for the biggest single-day streams for an album by a female artist and is all many of my friends are listening to. The re-records are near duplicates of the original and she has added some new ones ‘From the Vault’ in an attempt to gain ownership of her music.

 

Taylor Swift started her career by signing a 13-year contract with Big Machine Records and this ended in 2018. Her first contract means Big Machine Records owns the masters to her first 6 albums and she gets to keep the copyright if she wrote the songs. However, whoever owns the masters owns the record and make the money whenever it is played. Artists normally give the labels control of their masters for a while in return for the label’s influence and financial risk.

 

In 2019, she failed to buy her masters and they were instead sold to Scooter Braun, owner of Ithaca Holdings and manager of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. She wanted better terms and the chance to own her tracks, so she signed her next contract with Universal Records and started planning to re-release the albums to take the rights.

 

This will be done because as Taylor’s versions are released, the value of the originals will decrease - fans will hopefully pick her recordings over the originals to support her instead of Braun. For example, Taylor’s version of Love Story was downloaded 10,000 times in its first 24 hours whereas the original was only downloaded 200 times in the first 24 hours. Similarly, Swift has revealed she will license her versions of the songs to be used in TV when previously she denied this because doing so would pay Braun. 

 

This would not work if she didn’t have the money or huge fanbase so not many are privileged enough to take back their work in the same way. The new albums are not about making money, however. Swift reclaiming her masters highlights how hard it is for artists to own their work and how important it is they do. It encourages other, less well-known musicians to negotiate for better deals despite this being hard in a male-dominated industry.

 

Georgia Punwani, age 16 from Wimbledon High, comments, 'Taylor Swift reclaiming her music is really powerful because there is a pattern in the music industry of older men exploiting the profits of successful young women - Kesha, Britney Spears, and I'm sure many other artists. I think it's especially impactful with Taylor Swift because her music is so deeply personal (including the entirely self-written Speak Now) to her life story that for someone else to own that and not give her the option to purchase the rights is utterly wrong.'

 

Taylor Swift says in a tweet, “Hopefully [...] kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.” She is raising awareness for smaller artists to be conscious of what they are agreeing to in contracts so they can have financial freedom over their records and what they produce, and not struggle in the same way she has in the battle to own her songs.

 

Universal (the world’s largest record label) has doubled the amount of time during which other artists can’t re-record songs (normally it is about 5 years) so it hasn’t had a completely positive impact. However, the excitement around her next re-releases and new awareness about the music industry means the release of Red and Fearless (and later Taylor Swift, Speak Now, 1989 and Reputation) are worthwhile.