This July, Taylor Swift voiced strong dissatisfaction with not owning her early recordings, which were sold by her former record label, Big Machine Label Group, to Ithaca Holdings, whose principal is Scooter Braun. Exacerbating the situation was that Mr. Braun managed Kanye West during a time that he released a song and a video referencing Ms. Swift in ways that offended her. Also, Ms. Swift’s efforts to purchase the masters from Big Machine for herself reportedly failed when the transaction was conditioned on her remaining with Big Machine. (She moved to Republic Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, last November.) Ms. Swift wrote that she felt “stripped of [her] life’s work, that [she] wasn’t given an opportunity to buy.”
Suggesting that she might attempt to address that state of affairs by re-recording several albums to compete with the originals, Ms. Swift has shined a spotlight on re-recording restrictions in agreements between recording artists and their record labels.
Swift’s Concerns
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