Fearless (Taylor's Version)
- frontpageinitiative
- Aug 14, 2021
- 2 min read
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is officially released today and we could not be more thrilled to hear Taylor Swift’s magnificent voice bring this album back to life under her full artistic control. Swift confirmed in the Summer of 2019 that she was re-recording all of her previous albums before Lover, as the masters of those albums had been sold. Fearless, the second album from her catalog, sold 12 million copies worldwide and is one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century. However, why is 11-time Grammy Award winner re-recording an album that was released 13 years ago?
To begin, what is a master?
When an artist is signed with a label, the legal contract grants the record company as the owners of the copyrights for the recordings. This ownership contract is known as a “master,” and means that the artist gets paid a percentage of the revenue made, but lacks full copyright privileges.
Selling of TS’ Masters - Scooter Braun’s Got “Bad Blood”
Taylor Swift was under the management of Big Machine Records until 2018. Big Machine Label Group sold her masters to Ithaca Holdings in a $300 million deal, preventing Swift from owning her first six albums— from her self-titled to her chart-topping album, “Reputation.” Scooter Braun, a music manager who works with artists like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, is the owner of Ithaca Holdings, an entertainment investment company. There is clearly a lot of Bad Blood between these two, and it stems from the bullying that Braun has inflicted upon her and her reputation over the course of her career. Without her choice in the matter, her recordings were unethically sold to Braun, who continues to profit off of Swift’s works.
Swift has been very transparent about her conflicts with her former label and the ownership of her masters, and as stated in her announcement of the impending release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift writes that “[a]rtists should own their own work for so many reason, but the most screamingly obvious being that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work.”
What the Future Holds:
Her new and improved agreement with Universal Music Group allows Swift the ownership of her masters for all future works, and under Swift’s ownership catalogues, are record-breaking albums Lover (2019), Folklore (2020), and Evermore (2020). Swift stated in a public statement that she was thankful to now be signed with a label that believes she should have the right to own anything she creates. With her brave journey through this tumultuous conflict, she adds that “hopefully, young artists for 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.”
Listen to Fearless (Taylor’s Version) out now!
Sources:
Published April 9, 2021
Written by Fiona Xu ~ Edited by Amanda Chapa ~ Graphics created by Elwin Fu
Comments