Taylor Swift buys original album recordings

In recent years, Ithaca’s acquisition of Big Machine 2019 has launched one of the most fascinating sagas in the music industry. While Big Machine owned the rights to music through a series of Top Country Acts (Reba Mentire, Midland and Sugarland, to name just a few), Swift’s first six albums were perhaps the crown jewels, and an important reason why the sale was rated at around $ 300 million.

By time Ithaca acquired a large machine In the summer of 2019, Swift had already left the label and signed at Universal Music Group (The deal included provisions that would enable it to maintain control of her master shots). So fast at the time wrote in a blog postShe was aware that, after leaving Big Machine, CEO Scott Borchetta would probably sell the label – but she never expected Braun to be the buyer.

In the same post, Swift emphasized her controversial history with Braun, largely through his work with her old enemy, Kanye West. For example, she claimed that Braun West got and Justin Bieber got her online ‘plague’, in the midst of the Fracas about the leaked phone call with regard to a text about Swift in West’s song ‘Famous’.

Swift said she was “sad and superfluous” about the deal, and claimed that every time Borchetta heard her the name of Braun speak: “It was when I was crying or not.”

Moreover, it was Swift’s wish to easily possess the rights to her catalog. “For years I asked, argued for an opportunity to own my work,” she wrote. “Instead, I had the opportunity to sign back with Big Machine Records and ‘one’ album at the same time ‘earn’, one for every new one I returned. I walked away because I knew that once that contract had signed, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, so I and my future had bought. Clubs, then arenas, then stadiums. ”

Within a few months after the sale, Swift Begin teasing her ambitious response: She would recording Her first six albums, so that some control over the music is recovered, while apparently diluting the value of the original recordings. In 2021 she launched her Taylor’s version campaign with re -recording of Fearless And RedBoth of both in 2023 were followed by Speak now And 1989. (Together with new versions of the original albums, the projects also contain a range of previously unpaid tunes that are now known as “Kluis Tracks”, which were also re-recorded.)

Before all that, however, the Catalog of Swift changed ownership. Just over a year after the big machine -acquisition, Braun’s Ithaca Holdings Sold Swift’s catalog to Shamrock Capital in a deal Allegedly worth more than $ 300 million. Prior to that sale, Swift revealed, she had tried to regain control of her masters, but claimed that the Braun team, as part of the deal, demanded that she signed “an iron NDA” who would prevent her from spitting negatively about him. Swift also said that she was considering working with Shamrock until she found out that the deal conditions would still lead to Braun benefiting her old recordings for “a very long time”.

Braun from his part, later, pronounced About his handling of the Big Machine Acquisition and Swift Catalog Sale. In an interview from 2022 on NPRs Boundaries Podcast, he admitted that he came from ‘a place of arrogance’, assuming that he and Swift could work out things. “The regret I have there is that I made the assumption that everyone, as soon as the deal was closed, would have a conversation with me, I would see my intention, see my character and say, great, let’s be in things together,” he said. “And I made that assumption with people I didn’t know.”