Taylor Swift buys her early work, puts bad blood behind her

That might seem like an odd statement from one of the biggest pop stars in the U.S., whose Eras tour was the highest-grossing tour of all time. But Swift’s 2019 battle with former manager Scooter Braun, over ownership of her own work, made her the rare pop star to leverage her clout to bite back at an industry that often blocks artists’ autonomy.

Swift signed to the Nashville label Big Machine in 2005, when she was 15 years old. She left the label in 2018, and signed to Universal. Ithaca Holdings LLC, owned by Braun, then acquired Big Machine, including her master recordings. He sold them to L.A. investment firm Shamrock Capitol for $300 million. Braun had been her manager since 2010.

Swift claims she wasn’t offered the chance to buy her back catalog either time; she was also angry that Braun represented Kanye West, who put out what she considered a defamatory song about her that year.

Swift then took the unprecedented step of re-recording her first six albums, starting in 2021 with a “Taylor’s Version” of her 2008 album Fearless, originally released when she was 18 years old. Fans snapped up physical copies – often multiple copies, in differently colored editions.

She then did the same with three more of her early records; this week’s announcement comes before she could release either her 2006 debut or 2017’s Reputation; she says the former is already finished.

Swift did not disclose how much she paid to reclaim her work, but in her letter to fans she thanked them for supporting the “Taylor’s Versions” and for making her tour so successful.

“All I’ve ever wanted,” she wrote, “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.”