Taylor Swift announces she bought back her masters with heartfelt letter to fans: ‘Bursting into tears’
Taylor Swift has bought back her masters!
A week after Page Six exclusively revealed that buying back her masters was a possibility, the singer announced the news Friday with a lengthy message on her official website.
“I’m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow,” she began her note, which was formatted like a handwritten letter.
“A flashback sequence of all the time I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell this news. All the times I was thiiiiiiiiiiis close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through.
“I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now. I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found that this is really happening. I really get to say those words.
“All of the music I’ve ever made … now belong … to me.”
Swift went on to detail that her entire catalog — which consists of her music videos, concert films, album art and photography, unreleased songs, plus “the memories, the magic, the madness, every single era, [her] entire life’s work” — belongs to her.
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In 2019, record executive Scooter Braun bought the rights to her first six albums — “Taylor Swift,” “Fearless,” “Speak Now,” “Red,” “1989” and “Reputation” — before they were acquired by the investment firm Shamrock Capital a year later.
Braun’s original deal was estimated at $300M, while Shamrock paid even more.
In 2018, however, Swift signed a new deal with Universal Music Group and Republic Records, where she recorded and owns the masters of “Lover,” “Folklore,” “Evermore,” “Midnights” and “The Tortured Poets Department.”
The “Lover” songstress went on to explain in her letter that her music was so important to her and to her fans that she “meticulously re-recorded and released” four of her albums, which she called “Taylor’s Version.”
“The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned The Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music,” she noted. “I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now.”
She went on to thank Shamrock Capital for “being the first people” to offer her the chance to buy back her masters.
“They really saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams,” she said before joking that her first tattoo might be a “huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
The Grammy award winner then addressed Swifties’ incessant theories that she would soon announce “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)”, admitting, “I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it.”
She explained that she couldn’t seem to get her creative juices flowing because the album was “so specific to that time in my life,” where she longed “to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood.”
“To be perfectly honest, it’s the me album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it […] so I kept putting it off.”
However, she promised that fans would get to listen to the unreleased vault tracks when the time is right and if fans “are into the idea.”
On the other hand, she confessed to having re-recorded her debut album, “Taylor Swift,” and she “really [loves] how it sounds now.”
“Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about. But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”
Swift also addressed how other celebrities have been inspired to “negotiate to own their master recordings in their record contract.”
“Because of this fight, I’m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen,” she said before thanking her fellow artists for making the conversation into a “broad discussion.”
“You’ll never know how much it means to me that you cared. Every single bit of it counted and ended us up here.”
An “elated and amazed” Swift concluded her emotional letter by quoting her song “Mine,” “The best things that have ever been mine … finally actually are.”
The songwriter also broke her social media silence to celebrate the win by sharing photos of her sitting with her first six original albums fanned around her.
“You belong with me,” she captioned the post, quoting her famous 2008 song.
Swift’s post comes a little over a week after sources told Page Six that she finally had a chance to buy back the original recordings of her first six albums.
And the deal was backed by none other than Braun himself, whom Swift had previously dubbed of being a “bully” and the “definition of toxic male privilege” in the music industry.
“Interestingly enough, one of the individuals who is encouraging this deal to take place is Scooter, who was at the center of the deal the first time around alongside Big Machine,” said a source, referencing Swift’s original record label.
We estimated, at the time, that the price tag for her masters would be anywhere between $600 million and $1 billion, according to Clayton Durant, founder of the music consulting firm CAD Management.
