Taylor Swift reacquires rights to the music that inspired the ‘(Taylor’s Version)’ campaign

It’s all (Taylor’s Version) now.

Taylor Swift announced Friday that she had reacquired the rights to her early recordings, six years after music executive Scooter Braun bought her old record label (and with it, control of Swift’s first six studio albums).

Braun’s 2019 purchase of the Nashville-based Big Machine company — whose Swift holdings he later sold for a reported $300 million — inspired Swift’s massively successful “(Taylor’s Version)” campaign, in which the 35-year-old pop megastar has been meticulously re-recording each of those LPs in an effort to replace the originals in the marketplace.

“All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy,” Swift wrote Friday on her website after posting a photo on social media of herself surrounded by those early albums.

“I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me,” she continued. “The way they’ve handled every interaction has been honest, fair, and respectful. This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams. I am endlessly thankful.”

Last week, the New York Post’s Page Six reported that Braun — who once managed Swift’s nemesis Kanye West and whom Swift has accused of bullying her — was “encouraging” the new deal between the singer and Shamrock Capital, the L.A.-based investment firm that bought the rights to Swift’s early music from Braun in 2020. Yet a source close to the contract negotiations, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, rebutted that claim.

“All rightful credit for this opportunity should go to the partners at Shamrock Capital and Taylor’s Nashville-based management team only,” the source told The Times. “Taylor now owns all of her music, and this moment finally happened in spite of Scooter Braun, not because of him.”

Shamrock was founded in 1978 by the late Roy E. Disney, a nephew of Walt Disney; Swift has struck several deals with the Disney company in recent years, including her decision to make a 2023 concert movie available to stream on Disney+.

The New York Post reported that Swift paid Shamrock between $600 million and $1 billion for the rights to her albums, a price range The Times’ source described as “highly inaccurate.”

Through a representative, Braun said on Friday: “I am happy for her.”

The pop star also provided an update on “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” in her Friday note.

“[I]t’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or the photos or videos. So I kept putting it off,” she said of the anticipated redo, which will follow earlier “(Taylor’s Version)” updates of her albums “Fearless,” “Red,” “Speak Now” and “1989.” “There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch,” she added.

Swift said she had “already completely re-recorded” her self-titled debut album, which she released in 2006 at age 16, and “really love[s] how it sounds now.”

The original “Reputation” followed a public feud with West and his then-wife, Kim Kardashian, that reshaped Swift’s established image as the girl next door: “My reputation’s never been worse,” she told a new love interest in the song “Delicate,” “So you must like me for me.” The LP found the singer — who had described 2014’s “1989” as her first “official pop album” — dabbling in sounds and textures borrowed from hip-hop and R&B; the song “End Game” even featured a guest verse from the rapper Future.

“Reputation” earned a Grammy nomination for pop vocal album, though it famously missed a nod for album of the year after Swift had scored three earlier nominations in that category. In 2024, the singer became the first artist to win album of the year four times when “Midnights” took the prize; Swift’s latest project, “The Tortured Poets Department,” was nominated for album of the year at February’s ceremony, but Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” won.

Friday’s announcement came around six months after the finale of Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour, which launched in March 2023 and ran for 149 shows across five continents. The tour is said to be the highest-grossing of all time, with ticket sales in the neighborhood of $2 billion.

And in case anyone was unclear about how much this deal with Shamrock Capital means to Swift, she laid it out pretty clearly in her note.

“My first tattoo,” she wrote, “might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”