After losing ownership of her original six albums, Taylor Swift is rerecording and re-releasing her own versions, giving the fans the ability to experience her music in a new way. WORDS by HANNA MASRI and MADELEINE NICKS ART by CLAIRE TOLLES
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t’s safe to say that we’re all crumpled pieces of paper lying here after listening to “Red (Taylor’s Version).” An album that was first released in 2012 has undergone a modern re-recording, and the new version is the moststreamed album in a single day from a solo female artist with 90.8 million streams on Spotify. For the non-Swifties of the world, it might seem unnecessary and repetitive for Swift to re-record her older albums, but she has her reasons. The issue begins and ends with ownership. When Swift started her career as a young teenager, she signed with the label Big Machine Records under Scott Borchetta. Because of that original contract, the label technically
owned the masters to her first six albums. In 2018, Swift left Big Machine Records and moved to Universal Music Group, where she could record and retain the rights of her future albums, starting with "Lover." "In Taylor's re-recordings, the lyrics and sounds haven't changed, but it's the business aspect that's shifted. She has been fighting for years for the distribution of her work and the ownership of her music, and the re-recordings symbolize a new era of Taylor Swift," junior Alexandra Siegel said. While Swift signed with Universal, a manager named Scott Samuel "Scooter" Braun bought Big Machine Records and Swift's masters along with it, which was a shocking and brutal surprise for Swift. According to Swift in a Tumblr post, she had a turbulent pre-existing relationship with Braun, who bullied her for years through his clients, such as Kanye West. Swift described this ownership as her "musical legacy [lying] in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it." A series of scandals followed, flooding the internet. Braun and Borsheta blocked Taylor from performing or using her old music. Swift attempted to negotiate the terms of the ownership, but her attempts did not change any-
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