The Impact of Taylor Swift's Re-Recordings
For decades, artists have been taken advantage of by record labels for making money. Most artists don’t own their music and only receive small percentages of the total revenue in comparison to what the label makes from their music. Artists like Rihanna, Jay-Z, U2, Metallica, Chance the Rapper, Prince, Ciara, Iggy Azalea have disputed to take charge and own the masters of their recordings.
On November 12th 2021, Taylor Swift released Red (Taylor’s Version) under UMG which is the second album she released this year from her old catalog.
Back in 2018, Taylor Swift left Big Machine Records at the end of her 13-year contract, to sign with Republic Records later on under Universal Music Group. This went down as one of the most controversial and impactful moments in the music industry as Swift openly spoke about not being given a chance to buy and own her recordings unless she agreed to bind herself in another contract. Swift’s catalog had reportedly been sold to Scooter Braun (Ithaca Holdings) for a whopping $300 million.
Her move to UMG allowed her to own the masters of the music she released under Universal Group, including the re-recordings of her catalog. Taylor is technically “covering” her own songs as new sound recordings, which in turn are the new masters that she now fully owns. This has allowed her to license the new recordings for commercial purposes and decline requests being made to use music from her old catalog by bypassing the owners of the old masters which has resulted in a devaluation of the music.
This has now been marked as a very important issue in the music industry as it has opened a dialogue to expose the flaws within the music industry. And although it is challenging for independent as well as most major artists to own their original masters, it is a reminder to people within the industry that one can refuse to let others capitalise on their creativity and reiterates the importance of artists owning their work. Thus pivoting us in the right direction.