"All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me": Taylor Swift is "Elated and Amazed" as She Buys Back the Rights to Her First Six albums

Taylor Swift has ended the long-running battle over the ownership of her music which began in June 2019 when music manager Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings bought Swift's former record label Big Machine and, with it, all the songs from Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989 and reputation.

Swift called it her “worst-case scenario” at the time of the deal signing off by saying she was "sad and grossed out" by the news, accusing Braun of being complicit in the "incessant, manipulative bullying" against her by Kanye West, one of his clients, and claiming she was denied the chance to buy her masters outright, instead being offered a deal to “earn” them back one album at a time.

"Some fun facts about today’s news," she wrote at the time. "I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years."

"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 wrote alongside a posted photo Justin Bieber posted to his socials of him, Kanye West and Braun with "Taylor Swift What Up" written beneath. "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."

"This is my worst case scenario," she wrote. "This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it."

Swift responded to the original sale of her masters by vowing to re-record those records, effectively diminishing the value of those master tapes, and putting ownership back in her hands.To date, she had released four re-recorded albums - known as "Taylor's Versions" - with bonus "Vault" tracks and extra material.

"I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies. I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it," she told Billboard in 2019.

"When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them," she wrote in June 2019. "Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever."

Thankfully "forever" is no longer the case.

In 2020, Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings sold the album masters to Shamrock Capital for a reported $405 million, earning Ithaca $265 million, a deal which prompted Swift to again criticise the sale, stating, “This was the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge.”

Now Shamrock Capital have sold the rights back to Taylor Swift for an undisclosed nine-figure sum.

"I’m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow," Taylor wrote in a handwritten note to her fans posted on her website on Friday 30 May. "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 thiiiiiis close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now. 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":

"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."

"To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it," she continued in the note. "To my fans, you know how important this has been to me - so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released 4 of my albums calling them Taylor’s Version. The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned the Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music. I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now."

"All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnerships, with full autonomy," she wrote. "I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. The way they’ve handled every interaction we’ve had has been honest, fair, and respectful. 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. I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead."

Despite the obvious elation for Taylor and her loyal fanbase, there is a downside to the news because two of her previous Big Machine albums were yet to get the full Taylor's Version treatment. In particular her 2017 album, reputation, which fans were especially expectant for after 'Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor's Version)' was played in the opening scene of the finale of TV show Handmaid's Tale on Tuesday. Her self-titled debut album from 2006 is also yet to be released.

"I know I know. What about Rep TV?" Taylor wrote, addressing the elephants in the room. "Full transparency, I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it. The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honesty, it’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch. I’ve already completely re-recorded my entire debut album and I really love how it sounds now. Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about. But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now."

"I’m extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans," she wrote. "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. Thank you for being curious about something that used to be thought of as too industry-centric for broad discussion. You’ll never know how much it means to me that you cared. Every single bit of it counted and ended us up here.

Thanks to you and your goodwill, teamwork, and encouragement, the best things that have ever been mine… finally actually are."

In his response to the news, Scooter Braun kept it short and sweet in a five word statement: “I am happy for her.”

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