Taylor Swift’s long, very public and very personal battle to own the rights to her first six albums, from her self-titled debut to “Reputation,” came to a happy conclusion for the singer this week, as she announced on Friday that, after the catalog, originally released and owned by Big Machine Records, had already been owned by three different entities, it’s finally hers.
“All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” she wrote, with dramatic pauses signaling just how long and challenging the pursuit has been. “And all my music videos. All the concert films. The album art and photography. The unreleased songs. The memories. The magic. The madness. Every single era. My entire life’s work.”
Ownership was a key component of the deal she signed with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records in 2018, and everything she’s released since then, including the “Taylor’s Versions” of four of the albums that she re-recorded in an effort to claw back at least some of the ownership of her early material, which was acquired by Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2019 and then sold to Shamrock Capital the following year.
There is no shortage of lengthy and confusing timelines of Swift’s battle to own those albums on the Internet, but below is a concise history.
The long and convoluted saga began nearly six years ago, in the early hours of June 30, 2019, when Braun announced that his Ithaca Holdings had agreed to acquire Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group — and the recorded-music rights to Swift’s first six albums — along with the company’s publishing operation, for around $300 million.
“The idea of Scott and I working together is nothing new, we’ve been talking about it since the beginning of our friendship,” Braun said in a statement. “I reached out to him when I saw an opportunity and, after many conversations, realized our visions were aligned. He’s built a brilliant company full of iconic songs and artists. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? By joining together, we will create more opportunities for artists than ever before, by giving them the support and tools to go after whatever dreams they wish to pursue.”
Swift had left Big Machine the previous year at the end of her contract, and aligned with Universal Music Group, Big Machine’s longtime distributor, in a partnership that saw her owning her masters while UMG manufactured, distributed and helped promote her future recordings. In a social media post at the time, she thanked Borchetta “for guiding me through over a decade of work that I will always be so proud of,” but noted, “It’s also incredibly exciting to know that I’ll own all of my master recordings that I make from now on,” she wrote in a social media post at the time. “It’s really important to me to see eye to eye with a label regarding the future of our industry.”
Hours after the deal was announced, Swift slammed it in a long Tumblr post, saying she learned of the deal “as it was announced to the world” — although that seems unlikely, as sources said it was discussed at a Big Machine shareholders five days earlier; her father, Scott Swift, was a shareholder at the time. She also said that she had attempted to acquire the catalog herself but that Borchetta’s terms were onerous, including a requirement that would get the rights to one past album for every new one she submitted.
The post included a lengthy attack on Braun, who she said bullied her, at times with management clients Justin Bieber and Kanye West. “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. “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.”
Later that day, Borchetta responded with his own statement, disputing Swift’s claims and including screen shots of documents, one of which read in part, “Upon execution [of a new contract], BMLG shall assign to TS all recordings (audio and/or visual), artwork, photographs and any other materials relating to TS which BMLG owns or controls.”
As the day went on, Bieber and then-fellow Braun client Demi Lovato posted in his defense, although Bieber apologized for his past actions, calling the post “hurtful” and writing, “I thought it was funny but looking back it was distasteful and insensitive.” However, multiple celebrities spoke out for Swift.
The situation became even cloudier three days later, when Swift’s attorney, Donald Passman, made a rare public statement, saying in part, “Scott Borchetta never gave Taylor Swift an opportunity to purchase her masters, or the label, outright with a check in the way he is now apparently doing for others.”
On August 25, less than two months after the Big Machine deal was announced, Swift announced her plan to re-record her first six albums — a move that many other artists, including Def Leppard, had made in an effort to own the rights to recordings of their biggest hits. However, it had never before been done on the scale Swift announced. In an interview with “CBS This Morning,” she criticized Borchetta, saying, “I knew he would sell my music, I knew he would do that. I couldn’t believe who he sold it to. Because we’ve had endless conversations about Scooter Braun, and he has 300 million reasons to conveniently forget those conversations.”
The situation escalated in November around the American Music Awards, where Swift was being honored as artist of the decade. She claimed that Braun and Borchetta refused to allow her to use any songs from her back catalog in her performance at the award show, and that the two were denying use of her older hits in a Netflix documentary. Big Machine denied those allegations; days later a Swift rep claimed that Big Machine owed the singer nearly $8 million in unpaid royalties.
Big Machine ultimately granted permission for Swift to perform her older hits on the AMAs. On the show, she wore a shirt with the names of the albums printed on it.
On Nov. 22, Braun said he and his family had received “numerous death threats” over the situation. “I assume this was not your intention,” he wrote, addressing Swift. “But it is important that you understand that your words carry a tremendous amount of weight and that your message can be interpreted by some in different ways.”
As the pandemic set in the following year, the situation reached a sort of cold-war status, until Nov. 1, 2020, when Swift was legally clear to begin re-recording her earlier albums.
Just two weeks later, 17 months after he acquired it, Braun sold the Big Machine catalog — including the rights to Swift’s albums — to Shamrock Holdings. Swift claimed again that she was denied a reasonable opportunity to acquire the catalog herself, saying Braun had demanded a non-disclosure agreement before negotiations could begin. “My legal team said that this is absolutely not normal, and they’re never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off,” she wrote. “He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me.”
On April 9, 2021, she released the first of her re-recordings, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” a meticulously re-recorded version of the 2008 album’s 13 songs, with more than a dozen bonus tracks. She has done the same for three other albums, which formed the basis of her blockbuster 2023-24 “Eras” tour — which went on to gross an estimated $2.2 billion — with only “Reputation” and her self-titled debut remaining.
“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all of my music,” she wrote at the time. “I hope you’ll like this first outing as much as I liked traveling back in time to recreate it.”
In June of 2021, Braun told Variety that he felt “regret” over the situation. “I regret and it makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” he said. “All of what happened has been very confusing and not based on anything factual.”
“I don’t know what story she was told,” he continued. “I asked for her to sit down with me several times, but she refused. I offered to sell her the catalog back and went under NDA, but her team refused. It all seems very unfortunate. Open communication is important and can lead to understanding. She and I only met briefly three or four times in the past, and all our interactions were really friendly and kind. I find her to be an incredibly talented artist and wish her nothing but the best.”
While the two continued to trade barbs and conflicting statements over the ensuing years, Swift’s re-recordings, combined with the five new albums she has released since leaving Big Machine, have played a huge role in amplifying her already-world-dominating popularity and leading her to billionaire status.
There is little question that ultimately, the battle has immeasurably burnished her reputation while doing significant damage to Braun’s, although it has significantly increased his personal wealth. And judging from Swift’s letter on Friday, Shamrock showed considerable business savvy by being “honest, fair and respectful” in “every interaction,” apparently showing an awareness of the sensitivity of the situation and the considerable potential for their own reputational damage by continuing to hold an asset that is clearly much more than a mere asset to Swift.
But most importantly, the entire feud has taught untold millions of people, especially creatives, about the value of owning one’s work.