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bitchy | Taylor Swift purchased the masters from her first six albums for nine figures

In 2019, Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings purchased all of the masters held/owned by Big Machine. Those masters included Taylor Swift’s first six albums. Swift was furious. Swift and her fans went to war with Braun for a while, and within a year of the sale, Braun off-loaded the Big Machine property to Shamrock Capital for a tidy profit. In the past six years, Taylor ended up taking Kelly Clarkson’s advice – Clarkson randomly tossed off a tweet back in 2019, advising Taylor to rerecord those albums and ask the Swifties to buy the re-recordings. Taylor did just that, and the “Taylor’s Version” re-rerecordings were massively successful too. Well, after all of that, Taylor has now bought back her masters for her first six albums. The dramatic announcement came on Friday:

In one of the more dramatic business developments in pop music history, Taylor Swift has purchased her catalog of recordings that were initially released through Big Machine Records, after six years of transfers and turmoil. She acquired those six albums and associated visuals from their most recent owner, Shamrock Capital, for an undisclosed nine-figure sum, a price tag that is being characterized by Swift as exceptionally fair and reasonable.

The singer will be reissuing her old Big Machine albums, which were first sold by Big Machine against her wishes in 2019,. But now there will be two fully authorized versions of each of those albums in the marketplace, since she’s saying the re-recorded “Taylor’s Versions” will continue to be available alongside the originals. Two of those bonus-filled editions have yet to come out, including the long-awaited “Reputation (Taylor’s Version),” and her statement declares this deal won’t keep the remaining pair of do-overs from still being released.

News of a possible sale by Shamrock to Swift was first reported by the New York Post, but a source close to the negotiations disavowed elements of that story, saying the price tag reported was grossly inflated, and that there was no involvement of Scooter Braun. His Ithaca Holdings bought the catalog in 2019 before Shamrock acquired it from him a year later; he no longer participates in any profit from a sale, and Swift’s camp is adamant he had no part in Shamrock’s decision to sell.

Said the source close to the sale: “Contrary to a previous false report, there was no outside party who ‘encouraged’ this sale. All rightful credit for this opportunity should go to the partners at Shamrock Capital and Taylor’s Nashville-based management team only. Taylor now owns all of her music, and this moment finally happened in spite of Scooter Braun, not because of him.”

The source added, “The rumored price range that was reported is highly inaccurate.” While no price tag will be publicly forthcoming, insiders say the seller was interested in making a good-faith deal and the ultimate price was far closer to the $300 million Shamrock was reported to have paid in 2020 than the far more extravagant $600-million-to-$1 billion the Post hypothesized in its story.

Prior to this week, Swift fans were certain an announcement for “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” would be forthcoming on Memorial Day or thereabouts. But for those who still have that as their primary concern, the singer assured fans that her plans to reissue her original albums will not affect plans to put out the final two “Taylor’s Version” editions, the other of which would be a new version of her debut album — though she hedge a bit. Don’t expect the new “Reputation” or “Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version)” any time soon, she cautioned in the note, even though songs from a partially re-recorded version of the former album have already been licensed for television (recently appearing in “The Handmaid’s Tale”).

As she explains in her letter: “I know, I know. What about Rep TV? Full transparency. I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it. The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while Feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch. I’ve already completely re-recorded my album, and I really love how it sounds now. Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about. But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”

[From Variety]

Variety mentioned something which I didn’t know about the 2019 Big Machine sale – not only did Taylor lose the rights to/ownership of her masters, she didn’t own the rights to her music videos, artwork and concert specials from that era. So now she has the rights to ALL of it, she owns all of it free and clear. As for the money… as Variety notes, their sources are saying that it was closer to $300 million. Page Six’s sources say the final figure was around $360 million. Which sounds like a lot, but consider this: she likely made around $2.5 billion just from the Eras Tour. So, she has the money and she used that money to buy her own work back. Good for her.