(CNN Business) – Taylor Swift announced Thursday Good morning America that a new recording of one of their first albums, “Fearless”, will be released on April 9th.
But why take the time to re-record an album released 13 years ago by one of the most important artists in music?
“Fearless” – for those who don’t live and breathe the news of Taylor Swift – is their most successful album. He has sold more than 7 million albums. However, the pop star does not own the master recordings of the songs on that album, or the songs on the albums he recorded for “Lover” in 2019. That includes big hits like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, ” Mine “and” Shake It Off “.
By re-recording her hits, Swift can regain control of her recordings, or at least the new “Taylor version” of it.
“The recordings he originally made were made at a different time and include contractual and legal objections. She’s not happy about this, ”Serona Elton, director of the music business program at Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, told CNN Business. “Now she has full control over the recordings, although this doesn’t change the control over the old recordings,” he explains.
When an artist signs with a label, the typical legal arrangement gives the record company ownership of the copyright to the recordings. This is commonly known as a “master” recording.
“The artist gets a percentage of the income from the recording, but he has no control,” Elton added. Now Taylor makes and publishes these tapes. What happens to them is entirely up to her, ”he explained.
Taylor Swift’s strategy
Elton says re-recording her songs is a “great strategy” for Swift.
“Taylor has a very dedicated and loyal fan base, and her voice is powerful enough to persuade her listeners to drop her old recordings and listen to the new ones she now owns,” he said.
Owning the master recordings of hits like “Love Story” – the new recording of which was released at midnight on Friday – will likely make Swift a lot of money. But owning your recordings is more than a matter of money.
Taylor Swift’s new recording of her hit album “Fearless” will be released on April 9th.
For most of her career, Swift had a deal with Big Machine Records. When it ended in 2018, the singer signed a new deal with Universal Music Group. This gave him the ownership of his master recordings in the future.
His previous Big Machine catalog was sold to a company owned by music manager Scooter Braun. Braun’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group as part of a $ 300 million deal in 2019.
Swift said this was the “worst case scenario” as she claimed Braun bullied her for years.
“This is what happens when you sign a 15-year deal with someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept,” Swift wrote on Tumblr in 2019. And if that man says ‘music has value’, it means that its value is in the debt of men who did not participate in its creation.
‘Artists must have their own work’
After the announcement of “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” Thursday, Swift explained why she was re-recording her songs.
“I’ve talked a lot about why I’m re-doing my first six albums, but the way I chose to do this will hopefully help illuminate where I’m from,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “Artists should own their own work for many reasons, but the most obvious is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work,” he added.
For Swift, the re-recording of “Fearless” is a project that contributes to a very productive period. He released two albums during the coronavirus quarantine, ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’, which topped the charts.
Marianne Garvey contributed to this report.