Taylor Swift Opens Up About Her Master Recordings Being Purchased

What’s even crazier is all these folks like Demi Lavatto, etc are defending Scooter. Gross. Just because you didn’t experience what Taylor experienced doesn’t mean you should defend him. Come on.

 

Scott borchetta is the villain in all this not scooter

 

To me, it's really not much different than any other job. I work as a Cloud Systems Administrator. I know that every script I write, system I design, etc. is always property of the company. Whatever profit they make from that is theirs. They paid me to do a job, I did it, and all the work I did is theirs to use. I can potentially back up my own work and use it later in a different context, but even that's potentially a violation of my employment terms.

As an artist, they sell the rights to their music to the label when they sign a contract. All the music they create while contracted to that company is their property. They're allowed to perform it and make money from doing so while either on that contract or after terminating the agreement, but they can't sell the produced music anymore without the company's consent and without the company fiscally benefiting from it.

Even then, the artists have the ability to re-record that music and re-release it, right? That's why we get re-recordings and re-imaginings of albums when the bands are no longer on the original labels? So while they have given up rights to the original masters, they haven't given up the ability to record a brand new song with similar song structure that has the same lyrics.

The only thing that's different is the emotional tie to it. Yes, music is more personal than code. But at the end of the day, I see employment as employment.

 

Well, that's kind of my underlying point about capitalism and exploitation.

The difference is you didn't sign a contract for this at 15, but, just think how much better your life and job would be if you actually had more control over the profits the company makes from your labor.

My point isn't that this isn't how the world works, I obviously know how it works, it's that it's a fatal flaw in the underlying system.

And I believe once we, as a society, start thinking about how to empower workers instead of giant companies, we'll all be better off.

 

Taylor probably gave Tumblr it's biggest traffic day in a while…

 

Both are

 

If this is happening to one of the biggest popstars in the world, it's happening to ur faves. Even if u don't care about Taylor this is bigger than her. Imagine how many artists have been discouraged or quit music all together because of the bs that labels pull and how they take advantage. Everyone should care. That doesn't even get into the discussion of men in power being petty af and sexism.

Like go tell ur fave band that they don't deserve to own their art and that labels should be able to own them like this and let me know how that goes over lol

 

Gross as the Famous debacle was, it nevertheless revealed Swift to be duplicitous and dishonest when trying to sway public opinion in her favor, and I have no reason to believe this instance is any different. I say this as someone who primarily represents artists and has sued practically every major label in existence for dicking over artists. Taylor’s situation is neither unique nor particularly oppressive. She signed the same deal at 15 that every other artist does, and I have no doubt her folks had talented transactional attorneys all over it. If she had misgivings, she could have disaffirmed the contract anytime before or shortly after she turned 18. She could have negotiated a right of first refusal to purchase the masters in the event of a sale by her label. She’ll get to recapture the rights FOR FREE under Section 203 of the Copyright Act after a certain number of years have passed. And as someone already mentioned, unless her deal has a clause to the contrary, she can always re-record the tracks. Plus, if she doesn’t trust Scooter to license her works appropriately, she can withhold permission on the publishing side and effectively render the masters worthless for anything other than traditional record consumption. She has many paddles with which to navigate the creek she now finds herself up. I don’t get people tripping over themselves to bemoan her situation.

 

I feel like it's mostly the principle. Yeah it's how the music industry works and it's a legal purchase, but it's gross and sad that the man she signed a contract with, has trusted since she was 15, and who she made successful at all, knowingly sold her masters to somebody who co-signed and promoted a revenge video with a model of her naked body. U can say this business of masters and contracts happens in the industry all the time, and I don't think Taylor would disagree and I think that's part of her point. It's not just that her masters sold (she knew they would) but the v personal nature of who they sold to.

Whether u think Taylor was caught in a lie with Kanye is irrelevant. Nobody is rly disputing this story. Their "version" is fairly lined up with hers but they're splitting hairs and then disagreeing about intent. Basically they're arguing whether it's rly "offering" her the masters if she has to earn them back in a 10 yr contract, and whether or not she got Scott's texts before or after she read the news and neither of those answers change her point which is her upset that a man who she feels has hurt, wronged, and violated her now has ownership of her masters and has reposted things about "owning" her.

As a woman she feels emotional that this man who has violated her and she wants nothing to do with owns her old masters. That would be devastating to anyone. She's trying to warn others. I mean in a different more extreme example look at what happened to Kesha: her rapist profits off her music including the songs she wrote about being abused by him. This is not an uncommon issue of women in the music industry having men who have victimized them try to own or stick it to them.

She'll theoretically be fine and continue to thrive and be one of the biggest popstars but that isn't rly her point here.

 

Alright, I trust you.

 

Revenge porn is more than "gross": hindsight is 20/20 and the judgment center of the human brain doesn't even finish developing until you're 25: her attorneys wouldn't have had the emotional attachment to the material to foresee how she'd end up feeling about this: just "rerecord the entire discography" as though the individual recordings are so easy to replicate (sonically, maybe, but tracks like "All Too Well" are lightning in a bottle): "this happens to everyone" just means everyone should be angry, not that there's nothing wrong with this scenario.

You're missing the point of why she's upset entirely here. It isn't about money. She's got plenty of that. And it's not even ultimately about Taylor. I'm grateful she's speaking up because as you said, this deal is common and songwriters deserve better.

 

Incredibly strange how every man suddenly thinks it's cool that artists normally get fucked over all the time so that they can make a post dunking on Taylor Swift.

 

This continues to be the most missed part: most people here know "this is how the industry works" -- we're saying that's the problem.

 

Right? Like I'm a musician and a songwriter. I studied publishing, music law and specifically what goes into most contracts to get my degree.

That knowledge doesn't make me look at this situation and go "tough shit, Taylor". It makes me go "something is seriously wrong with this system when you can be as rich, privileged and powerful as Taylor f-ing Swift and still be powerless when faced with a ~choice~ you made as a literal child".

 

Would we all be rending our garments if the masters had been sold to a completely vanilla third party rather than Scooter Braun? If Big Machine had simply been gobbled up by UMG/Warner/Sony? Why do we only care about master recordings as chattel when there's a soap opera angle attached to the narrative? Why are we generally offended that record labels own the output they pay to create (masters) when the artist still keeps the actual music they write (compositions)? Particularly in an age when digital distribution renders utilizing labels completely optional? And why are we ignoring the many features built into the system that Taylor either could have, can currently, or will be able to avail herself of? The "artists shouldn't have to live with the choices they made while young" line is literally the reason we have 17 U.S.C. § 203. She will eventually be able to get all her masters back without having to spend a dime. Being upset that she has to live a few years longer with a deal she could have voided for several years after making it (because contract law lets children do that) and that has made her a multi-millionaire in the intervening time is one of the most first world problems I've ever heard of.

 

If the creator of the art had been just as upset by that as Taylor is about her work being offered to someone who has antagonized her for years, yes. Because that's the point. Not the money. This "soap opera" (condescending much?) is about a young women's FEELINGS about the long term UNFORESEEABLE results of a contract she signed as a child. Not the money.

Glad you think it's a first world problem (and if I removed the personal context, I might even agree with you at face value), but for millions of creatives and honestly for women in general this just feels like the personification of the kind of shit we have to live with on a day to day basis being broadcast on a uniquely massive platform, and with all due respect your inability or refusal to see that perspective is a you problem. We aren't having the same conversation, which is fine - but I'm not gonna beat my head against a wall repeating myself.

 

In short: the who, then when, and the why matters. The world isn't two dimensional and I'm not going to start pretending it is just because it'd be easier to not have to care about things.

 

I hear what you're saying, but I have not seen anyone offer a concrete "solution" to the problems being identified. Taylor alienated her copyrights like almost all artists do and later regretted it. What is the proposal here? To abolish the alienability of copyrights? To allow for contracts entered into as minors to be disaffirmable well past the age of majority? For the timeline to exercise termination rights under Section 203 to be shortened? There were a bunch of things Taylor could have done to prevent this and, for whatever reason, didn't. Do we ignore the availability of those unused tools when discussing how the system should be changed? Is the system unjust unless it provides an escape hatch for every possible victim, no matter how many opportunities they passed up to mitigate the harm? I'm trying to pin down what people actually think her recourse should be, because it mostly sounds like they want to wave a magic wand.

 

And that part might be fair - although I still don't agree that a child whose judgment center doesn't finish developing until age 25 could've really prevented something in a system designed to take advantage of artists. "It's the way things are" is pervasive and it's easy to look at her now and let that cloud the fact that while she was still incredibly privileged at age 15, she wasn't the powerhouse she is now and to conflate the two is just strange. Do I know how to fix it? Nope, at least not right now. I won't pretend I have those answers. Most people don't. Right now, we're angry and still trying to get through the "we know this feels wrong even though it's clearly legal" phase. Which honestly is the first step to making any kind of change. Of course people want it to be easy! But I guess I just don't think it's fair to say that regular people (as opposed to the folks in charge) should have to know the solution in order to say something is a problem.

Edit: Sometimes you just gotta let folks feel how they feel is the moral of this story, I suppose. When the most privileged gets screwed, them using that platform to talk about it might just get enough notice to engender actual change. (Fingers crossed, at least.) I'm hoping her speaking at LEAST makes someone else look harder at the contract they're about to sign. But ultimately we're talking about systemic change and no, that's not gonna be easy. But it's worth a shot.

 

Weird use of "we" here when I've been talking about how labels exploit artists for like 20+ years and my general feelings on capitalism and art almost as long. So, yeah, I've been mad when it happened to bands no one has heard of, and I'm mad when a shitty person does it in a really vindictive way as well.

And, I'm glad people are paying attention to an issue like this when it impacts one of the largest artists in the world. Cause no one usually cares, so shit just sits on a shelf ....

Butch Walker • chorus.fm

I put out those records on a major label, for Sony. And they’re just not very cooperative in giving your masters back to do whatever you want with them. And they certainly don’t think they’re going to make any money at it, so they have no reason to do it. So, that’s the reason why I can’t just go out and put Letters on vinyl, or The Rise and Fall, because I don’t own the masters, sadly, which is one of the worst music business clichés ever that people fall victim to, is signing a big major record deal and then realizing you’ll never own the rights to that record ever again.

So…It doesn’t mean I can’t play the songs live, but, unless I wanted to do some goofy, like, re-record the record like people do? Which I…that’s just stupid, you know? I have no desire…that’s a moment in time. It is what it is. There’s a million things I detest when I hear those records that I wish I would have done differently, probably. But I would detest re-recording them more, I think, cause that’s just dumb, you know? And I think they were good for the time, but unfortunately, I can’t do what I want with the master recordings of those.

 

Part of the problem is that some people are treating this like Taylor's decision happened in a vacuum (which, as Jason's shown with the Butch Walker excerpt, is decidedly not the case). To suggest Taylor's team could not have foreseen her having emotional attachment to her music is to suggest she had nothing but neophytes working for her, because it's the oldest story in the book. Any competent music attorney or manager would immediately explain the ownership issue to the client, and I have no doubt they did so. Moreover, even if she didn't appreciate it at 15, she's almost certainly had multiple opportunities to renegotiate her contracts since then. I don't know what state's law governed her first record deal, but California law (where I practice) prohibits a personal service contract to extend beyond seven years. Assuming she resigned to Big Machine three or four albums into her career (and well into adulthood), she absolutely could have attached strings to not only her future records, but her back catalog as well. Chalk it up to a failure of imagination that she would care which particular third party owned her catalog, but realistically, there's no way to fix this at a surgical level. The solution has to be prophylactic, because the law can't make a post-hoc distinction between how the artist "feels" about different assignees taking ownership of their work after it's been sold the first time (if the issue is, in fact, the "who" of it all). But this also isn't unique to the music industry -- signing to a record label is no different than writing a screenplay for Lionsgate or joining Disney as an animator. You understand that you are paid for your creativity while ownership gets consolidated with the production entity. Frankly, musicians have it better in that regard, because at least sound recordings from independent contractors can't be designated work-for-hire (which is why you can recapture the rights after 35 years). I don't know if that helps explain why I just don't see the fire behind the smoke Taylor is blowing right now, but the portability of an artist's catalog strikes me as incredibly anodyne without further malfeasance accompanying it (like garbage royalty rates or oppressive profit calculations). Taylor's objection is the kind of psychic harm that nobody but the artist can be expected to prevent.

 

RT

 

Except I don't see the specific thing Taylor is complaining about as an "industry problem," because Taylor is actually complaining about something hyperspecific -- her masters being sold to someone who offends her on a personal level by someone she thought wouldn't do that. That's a failure of contracting, and there's no way to fix it other than for artists to contract better. Anything else requires blowing up the entire concept of copyright alienability or expecting labels to just concede ownership of masters (i.e., their primary investment and the thing that keeps them in business), which is why I consider the outrage over Taylor's situation to ultimately be aimless.