Subscribe
Follow Us
Taylor Swift might be able to buy back her original masters.
Since Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings acquired Swift's old record label, Big Machine Label Group in 2019, the former music manager who has worked with Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and more, owns the first six albums of Swift's. After the deal with Big Machine ended, she signed to Republic Records in 2018 where she can own all of her masters of her future recordings.
However, a year after Braun's Ithaca Holdings bought Big Machine, he sold the recordings to investment firm Shamrock Capital for a profit. Swift has been vocal over the years that she was not told about the sale of her albums.
“Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it,” she said via Tumblr at the time. “Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now 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.”
CEO of Big Machine, Scott Borchetta responded to Swift debunking her claim and said that he offered her that she could “‘earn’ one album [master] back at a time, one for every new one [she] turned in.” “100% of all Taylor Swift assets were to be transferred to her immediately upon signing the new agreement,” he wrote.
Who Wants Taylor Swift To Have Her Masters Back?
Now Shamrock Capital is allegedly interested in selling the pop star her original recordings back and the person who is campaigning for them to be done is shocking nonetheless.
“Interestingly enough, one of the individuals who is encouraging this deal to take place is Scooter, who was at the center of the deal the first time around alongside Big Machine,” said a source per Page Six.
Article Continues Below
For the last couple of years, Swift has been re-recording her first six albums: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation. So far, she has re-recorded Fearless, Speak Now, Red, and 1989. Fans expect that Reputation will be the next album she is re-recording.
Clayton Durant, founder of the music consulting firm CAD Management, claims that if Swift is able to buy back her recordings it would be for a pretty penny. He suggests that it would most likley be about $600 million to $1 billion. However, the way she could leverage her original recordings as well as her re-recordings she could increase her net worth significantly.
“If she could claw back and create a deal structure where she could get the rights to her original recordings, she exponentially increases the amount of money she makes,” Durant told Page Six.
Durant clarified that she still makes money off of the original songs but it is a lot less than her re-recordings as she owns the masters for those.
He added, “When she puts out a re-recording version, consumption also spikes on the original.”
As of now, there's no word if Swift is interested or if she has been presented with this offering. Fans are still anticipating her to drop Reputation (Taylor's Version) this year.
