Taylor Swift has announced that she has acquired her catalog for her six first albums in a deal with Shamrock Capital, re-uniting the superstar with her work six years after the original sale to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings sparked one of the most infamous disputes in the modern music business.
On Friday, the singer-songwriter shared a handwritten letter to her fans on her website, revealing the big news. Financial details of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.
“Hi. I’m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow. A flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was thiiiiiiiiiiiiis close , reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now,” Swift wrote. ”I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me.”
The news follows a years long feud with Scooter Braun after he originally acquired Big Machine Records and her catalog of master recordings at the time.
When reacting to the news of Braun’s acquisition, Swift described the sale to Braun as her “worst case scenario” and revealed that she asked Borchetta for years “for a chance to own” her work, but had instead only been given “the opportunity to sign back up at Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in.”
“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,” she said. “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.”
The singer confirmed in 2019 that she would re-record her songbook to own her masters. She has since rerecorded and released Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version). The only two albums left in her catalog yet to be released as a recording are Reputation and her debut album, both of which are still coming Swift teased.
Her later albums beginning with 2019’s Lover and onwards have been released on Republic, with Swift owning the rights to the master recordings.
More to come.
