{"id":121050,"date":"2025-05-30T12:08:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T20:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/30\/contract-queen-taylor-swift-regains-control-of-her-master-recordings\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T12:08:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T20:08:50","slug":"contract-queen-taylor-swift-regains-control-of-her-master-recordings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/30\/contract-queen-taylor-swift-regains-control-of-her-master-recordings\/","title":{"rendered":"Contract Queen Taylor Swift Regains Control Of Her Master Recordings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. note<\/u>: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow. As a flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was thiiiiiiiiiiiis close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that\u2019s all in the past now. I\u2019ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of the music I\u2019ve ever made\u2026 now belongs\u2026 to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014 Taylor Swift<\/a>, in a letter posted to her website<\/a>, explaining that she now controls her entire music catalog, after she was able to buy back the master recordings<\/a> of her first six albums. Swift purchased the master recordings from Shamrock Capital, the private equity firm that bought them from Scooter Braun in 2020. According to Billboard<\/a>, she reportedly paid about $360 million to regain ownership of her masters. \u201cI\u2019m extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans. Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I\u2019m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen,\u201d she wrote in the letter. \u201cThank you for being curious about something that used to be thought of as too industry-centric for broad discussion. You\u2019ll never know how much it means to me that you cared. Every single bit of it counted and ended us up here.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\"Staci
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Staci Zaretsky<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she\u2019s worked since 2011. She\u2019d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email<\/a> her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on\u00a0Bluesky<\/a>,\u00a0X\/Twitter<\/a>, and\u00a0Threads<\/a>,\u00a0or connect with her on\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Contract Queen Taylor Swift Regains Control Of Her Master Recordings<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo by Axelle\/Bauer-Griffin\/FilmMagic)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ed. note<\/u>: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow. As a flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was thiiiiiiiiiiiis close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that\u2019s all in the past now. I\u2019ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of the music I\u2019ve ever made\u2026 now belongs\u2026 to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014 Taylor Swift<\/a>, in a letter posted to her website<\/a>, explaining that she now controls her entire music catalog, after she was able to buy back the master recordings<\/a> of her first six albums. Swift purchased the master recordings from Shamrock Capital, the private equity firm that bought them from Scooter Braun in 2020. According to Billboard<\/a>, she reportedly paid about $360 million to regain ownership of her masters. \u201cI\u2019m extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans. Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I\u2019m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen,\u201d she wrote in the letter. \u201cThank you for being curious about something that used to be thought of as too industry-centric for broad discussion. You\u2019ll never know how much it means to me that you cared. Every single bit of it counted and ended us up here.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\"Staci
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Staci Zaretsky<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she\u2019s worked since 2011. She\u2019d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email<\/a> her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on\u00a0Bluesky<\/a>,\u00a0X\/Twitter<\/a>, and\u00a0Threads<\/a>,\u00a0or connect with her on\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day. I\u2019m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow. As a flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell you this news. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":121044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Staci-Zaretsky-7aomvn.jpeg?fit=150%2C100&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}