After lengthy feud, Taylor Swift buys back masters for first six albums (2025)

“I’ve 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: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” Swift wrote in a long letter posted to her website. “To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.”

Swift, 35, credited the success of the Eras Tour, which earned a reported $2 billion from 2023 to 2024 and became the highest-grossing concert tour in history, as well as the passionate support from her very loyal fan base, “for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now.” In addition to her masters, Swift said she now owns all of her music videos, concert films, album art and photos, and unreleased songs.

Swift’s battle to gain full control of her work has sparked numerous discussions in the music industry about artists’ rights since June 2019, when prominent artist manager Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings company acquired the Nashville-based Big Machine Label Group. Braun, known for helping shape the careers of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato, purchased the label in a $300 million deal from founder Scott Borchetta, who signed Swift to his fledgling company when she was a 15-year-old country singer-songwriter.

Included in that deal were the master recordings to Swift’s first six albums — “Taylor Swift,” “Fearless,” “Speak Now,” “Red,” “1989” and “Reputation,” released from 2006 through 2017. A master is a recording’s original version, and whoever owns the rights to them dictates how songs are licensed and used in movies, commercials and other media. As one of the top-selling artists in history, Swift’s masters are particularly valuable.

Swift, who by 2019 had left Big Machine for Universal Music Group, responded with a scathing, devastated statement that called the deal her “worst case scenario” and claimed that Braun had bullied her for years. Soon after, she said she planned to rerecord those six albums, which would theoretically devalue Braun’s purchase. (She has since released four “Taylor’s Version” records, and wrote Friday that if her fans are still into the idea, she might release more rerecordings.)

In November 2020, Braun sold Swift’s master recordings to private equity firm Shamrock Capital. Swift said in a statement that she was not given the chance to buy her masters from Braun unless she signed a nondisclosure agreement that ensured she would not say another negative word about him and expressed disappointment that Braun would still profit from this second sale of her music.

Now, Swift said that all she wanted “was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy” and is “forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. … This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams.” On Instagram, she posted photos of herself surrounded by physical copies of her first six albums, and in one photo, gathering them all up in her arms.

“We are thrilled with this outcome and are so happy for Taylor,” a representative for Shamrock Capital told The Washington Post.

Last week, Page Six reported that Braun was encouraging Shamrock Capital to sell Swift back her masters; the publication said the price for the sale could fetch between $600 million and $1 billion. A source close to contract negotiations who was not authorized to speak publicly about the details told The Post that “the rumored price range that was reported is highly inaccurate” (Variety reported that Swift paid “far closer” to the original price of $300 million) and added that Braun was not involved.

Braun has rarely spoken out about the situation, though in late 2019 he said his family had received death threats when Swift told her fans in a social media post that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past music on the American Music Awards. In a 2021 interview with Variety, Braun disputed Swift’s version of events about the second sale of her masters and said their few brief interactions before he bought Big Machine had been “friendly and kind.”

“I regret and it makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” he said.

In a statement on Friday, Braun said, “I am happy for her.”

Swift’s updates about her masters fight resulted in an outpouring of support from celebrities and elected officials and led to new conversations about the much-debated topic of artists’ control over their work. While stars have feuded with labels for years over master recordings — the most famous example being Prince, who changed his name in an effort to take back the reins from Warner Bros. — and a lucky few are able to negotiate control, the majority of new singers still have to decide whether they want to sign over rights to their music to tap the financial resources of a record label. And many times, they don’t completely grasp the convoluted contracts.

“I will say that what the last few years have done is enormously raise awareness in the artist community. … I can’t overstate how many artists don’t think about their rights until it’s too late. This is a tale as old as time,” said Bill Werde, director of the Bandier Program for Recording and Entertainment Industries at Syracuse University.

Swift’s saga has probably encouraged more musicians to pay attention to what they’re signing, Werde said. “Every time there’s a new chapter” in the back-and-forth between her and Braun, he said, “it just raises more awareness.”

Swift appears well-aware of her impact, and said in her statement Friday, “Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I’m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen.”