Over the past several years, one of the music’s biggest stories has concerned Taylor Swift and the rights to masters from her first six albums. Those rights were sold, first when Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings bought her old label Big Machine Records, and later via sale to Shamrock Capital, with Swift lamenting the absence of her approval — and lack of a transparent, fair opportunity to secure the rights herself.
Along with spurring a broader conversation about artists’ rights to their master recordings, the situation prompted Swift to re-record “Taylor’s Version” editions of her first six albums that she would earn in full. The projects have been incredibly successful, topping the charts while igniting fan support behind work that Swift herself — not businessmen — would own.
Swift still has two “Taylor’s Versions” left to record: one for her self-titled debut, and one for “reputation.” Fans have been particularly loud in theorizing that the latter was coming soon.
But amid that dialogue was dialogue about Swift potentially working to fully buy back the rights to her masters. That conversation proved true, with Swift announcing the successful purchase in a statement Friday morning.
Swift credits the success of the “Taylor’s Version” projects — and her record-breaking Eras Tour — with opening the door to to the purchase opportunity. She was also complimentary to Shamrock for its willingness to negotiate on the music.
“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,” wrote Swift in a letter on her website. “I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me.
“My first tattoo just might be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
In her letter, Swift celebrates full ownership of all music released in her career, as well as the music videos, concert films, album art, photography, unreleased songs, “the memories, the magic, [and] the madness.”
As for the remaining two “Taylor’s Version” albums, Swift provided cautious optimism that they “can still have their moment to re-emerge when the time is right, if that is something you guys would be excited about.”
She noted that the new take on the debut album has already been recorded in full and that she “really [loves] how it sounds now.”
“Reputation,” on the other hand, is unfinished. Swift notes she has not even recorded a quarter of it, struggling to build upon the raw emotion that drove the original release.
“It’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it … so I kept putting it off.”
While Swift stopped short of explicitly confirming plans to fully record and release the album, she did explain that “there will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
