Taylor Swift has revealed the unconventional negotiating team she deployed to reclaim ownership of her master recordings: her mum and brother.
Speaking on the New Heights podcast, Swift disclosed how her family members successfully secured the rights to her first six albums from Shamrock Capitol in a nine-figure deal completed in May, Variety reports.
The pop superstar explained that she had been “actively saving up money to buy my music back” since her teenage years, viewing the purchase as deeply personal rather than purely financial. “For me, this is not, ‘Oh, I want to own this asset because of its returns, because of the dividends that I will receive over the years,'” Swift stated. “I want it because these [are] my handwritten diary entries from my whole life. These are the songs I wrote about every phase of my life.”
Swift’s decision to send her family rather than traditional representatives stemmed from their intimate knowledge of her previous unsuccessful attempts to regain control of her catalogue. Her mum and brother could convey “all the times we’ve tried to buy [the masters], all the times it’s fallen through, all the times we had gotten plans together and figured out something we thought was gonna work and it didn’t at the last minute.”
Throughout the 2020s, Swift had been re-recording her early albums after losing the rights to them, believing these Taylor’s Versions were the “closest I would get to owning my music.” However, following the massive success of her Eras Tour, Swift and her team recognised the opportune moment to pursue full ownership of her original masters.
The negotiation process required patience, with Swift’s mum initially tempering expectations after the discussions. “My mum calls me afterwards and she like, ‘Look, you know, they were wonderful, they heard us out, we have no idea which way they’re gonna go with this,'” Swift recalled. The uncertainty persisted for months until the pivotal phone call arrived whilst Swift was in Kansas City.
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“It was a couple of months after the Super Bowl, we’re in Kansas City and I get a call from my mum, and she’s like, ‘You got your music,'” Swift revealed, describing the moment she finally secured ownership of her creative output.
Swift emphasised that her masters represent far more than commercial assets, encompassing “my photography, my music videos, most of which I funded. My artwork, everything that I’ve ever done, is in this catalog.”
