Copyright Law (Taylor’s Version)

Taylor Swift’s announcement that she planned to re-record her first six albums was a source of great excitement for all Taylor Swift fans, known colloquially as ‘Swifties’, who immediately indicated their support for Swift’s endeavour (Milano, 2024). While the general public was ‘enchanted’ by the re-recordings, few understood the importance of the unprecedented lacuna or ‘blank space’ in intellectual property (‘IP’) law created by ‘Taylor’s Version’ of music copyright law. Swifties are commonly asked, ‘who actually owns Taylor’s lyrics?’, ‘will Taylor still get paid if I listen to the originals?’ and ‘when is Reputation (Taylor’s Version) being released?’. These questions can only be answered by delving into the music copyright and contract law behind the re-recordings, and their influence on the future of artist contracts, except for the last question, which remains a secret to even the most dedicated of Swifties. 

For context, in 2005, long before she was selling out stadiums, Swift signed to Scott Borchetta’s upcoming record label Big Machine Records (‘BMR’) (Milano, 2024). The terms of the contract required Swift to record six albums for BMR and, most importantly, to not re-record any of the songs on these albums for a set time period until the contract expired in November 2020, which, notably, is a normal term in artist contracts (Potgieter, 2024). Importantly, copyright law dictated that, regardless of the contract, as the songwriter, Swift would own the copyright to the lyrics and musical composition of each song, known as literary and musical works (Potgieter, 2024). As the copyright owner, Swift could produce copies of these songs and change them, as well as release and perform these songs publicly (Potgieter, 2024). BMR benefitted from owning copyright works ‘vesting in or relating to’ Swift’s songs, such as the cover art, which constitute artistic work, but most significantly, the ‘Masters’, or the original recording of her songs (Potgieter, 2024). 

After Swift released her album ‘Reputation’ in 2017, she left BMR, signing with Universal Music Group (‘UMG’) in 2018 (Potgieter, 2024). Swift, now one of the largest popstars in the world, offered to buy the Masters from BMR, whose counter-offer Swift subsequently rejected, as it mandated that she not only re-sign with BMR, but could only own her Masters by ‘earning’ them: one Master in exchange for a new album for the BMR label (Potgieter, 2024). The question here is why Swift would have wanted to acquire her Masters in the first place. 

BMR’s ownership of the Masters entitled the label, as most artist contracts do, to control how Swift’s first six recordings were used and to earn the majority of the royalties paid whenever the song were played publicly (Potgieter, 2024). This, with the prohibition on re-recording, made BMR the sole commercial beneficiary of Swift’s extremely valuable first six albums (Potgieter, 2024). The problematic nature of this was seen in how BMR initially attempted to prevent Swift from performing any songs from her first six albums at her ‘Artist of the Decade’ performance for the 2019 American Music Awards, which would have excluded decade-defining hits such as Shake It Off, Blank Space and Love Story (Douglas, 2019). 

The issue grew worse when BMR was bought by Ithaca Holdings, owned by Scooter Braun, with whom Swift had business-related bad-blood, who thus became the new owner and copyright controller of Swift’s Masters, but who later sold BMR and the Masters to Shamrock Holdings (Milano, 2024). Having lost any chance of owning her Masters, Swift decided to re-record these albums, greatly assisted by her new contract with UMG, which granted her ownership over all the albums’ copyright works, including the Masters, allowing Swift to own and commercially benefit from these re-recordings (Milano, 2024). 

As Swift owns the copyright to the lyrics and musical compositions of her songs, there was no legal hurdle to her merely re-recording the songs. She also owned the artistic work of the new cover art, which was designed as an incentive for fans to support the re-recordings over the original albums (Potgieter, 2024). Swifties can now answer that Taylor is, and always has been, the owner of her lyrics, and that, based on the terms of the original contract with BMR, Taylor will receive a minority portion of royalties if one were to stream her original albums (Potgieter, 2024). 

Importantly, however, IP and contract lawyers have recognised that, without her significant bargaining power as an internationally successful musician, Swift would have once again been in the position, like many smaller artists, of losing ownership of her Masters (Potgieter, 2024). While Swift owns the Masters of and earns the majority of the royalties from her re-recordings and her new albums since 2019’s ‘Lover’, this is not the case of most beginner artists, who find themselves in the position of 2005 teenage Swift (Milano, 2024). The impact of Swift’s re-recordings on the music industry is yet to be seen, with many record labels attempting to impose overly long prohibitions on re-recordings to avoid a Taylor-made repeat, which is problematic for most artists who lack Swift’s power (Milano, 2024). While it is uncertain whether artists will receive fairer contracts, lawyers should nonetheless vigorously represent their clients, because, to quote Swift herself, the next popstar is ‘probably sitting in a piano lesson or in a…choir’ and ‘today right now we need to take care of [them]’ (Schiller, 2019). 

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Bibliography 

Douglas, K.A. 2019. What the Hell Happened: Taylor Swift vs. Big Machine Records and Scooter Braun [Online]. Available: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/12/24/taylor-swift-big-machine-records-2019/ [2025, April 10]. 

Milano, B. 2024. Taylor’s Version of copyright [Online]. Available: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/how-taylor-swift-changed-the-copyright-game-by-remaking-her-own-music/ [2025, April 10]. 

Potgieter, H. 2024. The Tale of Copyright Cat-and-Mouse in Taylor’s Version [Online]. Available: https://spoor.com/taylors-version/ [2025, April 10]. 

Schiller, R. 2019. Taylor Swift Accepts Woman of the Decade Award at Billboard’s Women in Music: Read Her Full Speech [Online]. Available: https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/taylor-swift-woman-of-the-decade-speech-billboard-women-in-music-8546156/ [2025, April 10]. 

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Edited by Bryce Crockart