Taylor Swift's masters were sold twice without her (2019–2020)

What happened

In 2005, a 15-year-old Taylor Swift signed with the Nashville independent Big Machine Records. As is standard, the deal gave the label ownership of the master recordings of the albums she made there — her first six studio albums.

On June 30, 2019, Big Machine Label Group was acquired by Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings in a deal reported to top $300 million and backed by the Carlyle Group. Swift's masters changed hands as part of that sale. She objected publicly the same day, writing that she had not been given the chance to buy her own work and that the sale put her catalog in the hands of someone she did not want controlling it.

In November 2020, Braun's company sold the masters again — to the investment firm Shamrock Holdings — in a deal reported at around $300 million. Swift said she had again not been able to acquire them on acceptable terms.

Why it matters

Nothing about the transaction was unusual under industry norms — and that's exactly the point. The standard record deal routinely hands a teenager's life's work to a label in perpetuity, and that asset can then be bought and sold by third parties without the artist's consent or participation.

Swift's response: re-recording

Because Swift wrote her songs, she retained the composition copyrights even though she lost the masters. Her contract's restriction on re-recording eventually expired, and she began re-recording the albums as "Taylor's Version," creating new masters that she owns and encouraging fans and licensors to use those instead. The campaign turned an obscure contract term — who owns the masters — into a mainstream cause and a case study in artist leverage.

See the explainer on masters ownership for how the underlying mechanic works.