For Swifi, a nickname that Taylor Swift fans is an earthquake. Six years after having seen the property of his first six albums change hands, and after embarking on a vast registration operation to claim his work, the singer announces this Friday, May 30, since he finally acquired the rights of these albums by buying them in Shamrock Holdings, an investment fund.
“All the music I have created … now it’s me,” he wrote in a moved letter addressed to his fans, published on his official website.
“To say that it is my biggest dream that becomes a reality would be moderation,” he adds. “All I have always wanted is the opportunity to work enough to be a day capable of buying all my music, not related to anyone, without association, with total autonomy.”
The end of a long soap opera
This announcement closes a saga started in 2018 and followed avidly of its fans as by the American music industry sector. That year, Taylor Swift had left his historical record company, Big Machine Records, to join the universal ranks. Leaving behind their first six albums, recorded between 2006 and 2017.
The following year, Big Machine was sold in Braun Scooter, ancestor of the American music industry with which Taylor Swift has had an enmity since its inception. Then he acquired the “teachers” of these first six albums, original recordings used to make vinyls, CDs and other digital copies, thus becoming the decision of their exploitation. The “teachers”, so coveted in the world of music, are one of the main sources of income of artists who have rights.
The news of this agreement had deeply affected Taylor Swift, who was later estimated “stripped of life of life.”
Subsequently, these first six albums had still changed their hands when Scooter Braun had sold them to Shamrock Holdings, whom Taylor Swift has just bought them.
Against bad fortune … New fortune
What was presented as a cruel disappointment would finally result in one of the most fruitful decisions of Taylor Swift’s career: in 2020, the singer announced his plan to register these first six albums. One way to recover his work, capitalize it … and eclipse the originals, with their dedicated fans to listen and buy only the new versions.
The bet seemed daring; It turned out to be a winner immediately. Between 2021 and 2023, Taylor Swift published the record of four of these six albums: Brave, Red, Speak now AND 1989whose titles have been embellished every time with suffix “(Taylor version)” to differentiate them from the originals. Every time, the superstar has thrown them with new covers and unpublished pieces, presented as songs written during the creation of original albums, but never revealed.
The “(Taylor version)” has been imposed as phenomenal successes, exceeding the scores of the ancients. This triumph was concomitant with that of his Eras tourA retrospective tour of his entire career, with which he has traveled the world for 19 months between 2023 and 2024. He has to go out with the record of the tour. The most lucrative in history, with muchwith 2 billion dollars generated.
“The passionate support he has shown in these albums, and the success made by the ‘Eras Tour’, is what allowed me to buy my music,” he says today.
And the last two?
It remains, for your fans, an unanswered question: albums Taylor Swift AND Reputationrespectively, the first and sixth of your discography, will you also see daylight in an elevated version accompanied by unpublished? Taylor Swift seems not to have decided the question:
“I have not recorded the quarter of ‘reputation,” he writes. “This album is so anchored in a period of my life that I find a wall when I try to do it again.”
However, he ensures that “that moment comes to exhume the unpublished of this album.” From Taylor SwiftHis first album announces that he has completely remembered: “These two albums can always have their time to re -enter, when it is the right period.”
Source: BFM TV
