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In 2005, a fifteen-year-old songwriter from West Reading, Pennsylvania signed a thirteen-year recording contract with a brand-new Nashville label called Big Machine Records. She was their first artist. The label's founder, a former DreamWorks executive named Scott Borchetta, gave her a cash advance and got, in exchange, ownership of the masters to her first six albums. Twenty years later, that paperwork would generate the most public copyright fight in modern music history and end with Taylor Swift writing one of the largest checks an artist has ever written for her own back catalog.
Under American copyright law, a song carries two separate copyrights. The composition — the lyrics, melody, sheet music — belongs to the songwriter. The master recording — the specific captured performance — belongs to whoever the contract says owns it, usually the label. Swift wrote her own songs, so she always held the publishing rights. She did not hold the masters. From 2006's self-titled debut through Reputation in 2017, every spin of "Love Story," "Shake It Off," or "Blank Space" generated revenue Big Machine controlled.
The exit door was a federal statute. Section 114(b) of Title 17 says the exclusive rights in a sound recording do not extend to making another sound recording of the same composition, even one that imitates the original. An artist who owns the publishing can record a sound-alike. Most major-label contracts blunt this with a re-recording restriction — typically five to ten years after release. Swift's was five. Fearless came out November 11, 2008, so it became eligible for re-recording on November 11, 2013.
In August 2018, Swift's attorney Don Passman approached Big Machine to buy the masters back as her contract wound down. Borchetta countered that she would have to sign a new ten-album deal — six new albums in exchange for the old six. She walked. Her contract expired in November 2018 and she signed with Republic Records under Universal Music Group, on terms that gave her full ownership of all future masters and a fifty-percent-or-better royalty rate, up from the ten-to-fifteen percent Forbes estimated she had been earning.
On June 30, 2019, talent manager Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings — backed by the Carlyle Group, Soros Fund Management, and 23 Capital — bought Big Machine for $330 million. The masters to all six Swift albums transferred with the company. Swift learned about the sale when the public did. She posted a Tumblr statement the same day calling Braun an "incessant, manipulative bully," citing his role in producing Kanye West's "Famous" video and the 2016 Kim Kardashian phone-call leak. Hashtags trended. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked the private-equity backers. Fans dug up Carlyle's ownership of Wesco Aircraft Holdings, which supplies parts for Saudi combat aircraft used in Yemen.
In October 2020, Braun sold the masters to Shamrock Holdings — the Disney family's investment firm, founded by Roy E. Disney — for $405 million. Music Business Worldwide later calculated Braun and Ithaca cleared a $265 million profit. Shamrock offered Swift an equity partnership; she refused, in part because the deal contained a post-purchase earnout that meant Braun would still profit from her work. In November 2020 she began re-recording.
The releases came in sequence. "Love Story (Taylor's Version)" dropped February 12, 2021. Fearless (Taylor's Version) followed on April 9 and debuted at number one. The original Fearless was charting at 157 the week before; nineteen percent of its remaining sales evaporated and it fell off the Billboard 200 entirely. "Wildest Dreams (Taylor's Version)," released to streaming in September 2021 to capitalize on a TikTok trend, did 2,003,391 Spotify streams in its first four hours, breaking a record the original had set days earlier. Red (Taylor's Version), thirty tracks long, dropped November 12, 2021 and gave Swift her tenth Billboard 200 number-one. Speak Now (Taylor's Version) on July 7, 2023 made her the first woman with twelve number-one albums. 1989 (Taylor's Version) on October 27, 2023 sold over a million US units in week one with 1.6 million total — the largest sales week of her career. Sales of each original album collapsed: Red down 45 percent, Speak Now down 59 percent, 1989 down 44 percent.
The industry adjusted in real time. On November 12, 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported Universal Music Group had doubled the standard re-recording restriction period in new artist contracts. iHeartRadio, the largest US radio network, announced on November 17, 2021 it would play only the Taylor's Versions going forward. By October 2023 Billboard was reporting that Universal, Sony, and Warner had all overhauled re-recording clauses, with new restriction periods running ten to thirty years. The University of Virginia Darden School of Business released a Swift case study in September 2023. Bloomberg estimated the four re-recordings released by October 2023 were worth $400 million.
On May 30, 2025, Swift announced she had bought every master, video, concert film, and unreleased recording back from Shamrock. The price was not disclosed. She thanked Shamrock for letting her acquire everything "with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy." The day of the announcement, Spotify streams of the original six albums at least doubled compared to their April-and-May daily averages — the first time fans had been free to stream the originals since 2021 without subsidizing the people Swift had spent six years trying to financially erase.