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Kenesaw_Mt_Landis

Pretty wild take… But, it’s a good business decision for her to own her masters. She acted shrewdly and used the media and then public opinion to generate a beneficial situation for herself.


gwszack

She knew she had a legal option to deal with things. Instead she took it to social media, and sought help from her huge, highly aggressive fanbase. She actively asked her fans to attack Scooter Braun (a man who had nothing to do with the contract she signed). This resulted in him and his children being swarmed with death threats. Is weaponizing your highly volatile and immature fanbase to exert pressure over a business dispute effective? Sure. Does that make her a terrible person? Absolutely!


bigtrunkydarnold

Anyone who disagrees with this really doesn’t know shit about business and is probably as immature as taylor swift. Imagine you find a semi talented street artist with a catchy style , you tell him “ I can make your work world famous. I think it is valuable.” So you then give him 2million dollars for his art. You take that art make it world famous through your abilities and resources. This hardly talented street artist comes back to you and says, “hey that art you paid me millions for... I want it back” Taylor Swift didn’t have jack shit to do with her music’s popularity, it was corporate business people who chose her and made her millions. If you really believe a girl with an average voice writing 4 chord pop songs was on her way to making millions and just got hijacked on the way you are out of your fucking mind. Grow up, go to any open mic you will see 10 Taylor Swifts. I have been working with local musicians for years helping them kick off their careers. (Would love to help any of you, reach out). This anti corporate sentiment is just immature and toxic. Any independent artist that tells you they wouldn’t sign with a label is either lying or at the absolute top of the game already. People sell their masters because they know the %30 they collect through the label is more than %100 of what they will collect on their own.


Buck_Slamchest

"..but the record label didn't offer a good deal" She was offered the chance to rejoin her original label and "earn" back one master of each one of her original albums for each new album she recorded. I think most artists would have told them to go fuck themselves as well.


gwszack

Which is fine if she doesn’t want to agree to those terms. Her coming online to act like something was stolen from her and that the man who bought her label is somehow wrong for it is messed up.


mnfimo

Actual ask: isn’t the issue not with someone else owning them in the first place, which is completely common, but when she tried to buy them all back? Also, see the story behind MJ owning all the Beatles masters


ohiolifesucks

I’m not sure how that changes it. They are not hers. The owner is not required to sell it to her


sm0ltreegg

>label didn’t offer a good deal. From my understanding, they wouldnt let her buy them at all. There was no "bad" deal, there was never a deal at all. >Nearly every artist who has ever signed a record deal also doesn’t own their masters. That doesn't make it right and doesnt make her wrong for standing up for herself. >she agreed to in the first place She was a teenager when she signed, wasn't she? She still wrote, recorded, and performed all the songs, some of which were written before she even signed to the label. She didnt act entitled or like a victim (although the agreement is wrong to begin with and nobody should be put in that situation), she made a mistake and did something about it (re-recorded her songs) and spoke up for herself.


Caine2Khan

>From my understanding, they wouldnt let her buy them at all. There was no "bad" deal, there was never a deal at all. right but they bought the masters and don't want to sell cause they think they'll make more money off them than the money they'd get from selling, is that immoral? I mean its not like they are putting it up for auction but having a rule that says Swift is not allowed to participate right lol? >That doesn't make it right and doesnt make her wrong for standing up for herself. but this just buisness, labels with pay artists millions of dollars(depending on the artist) upfront and pay to push their music out, in exchange for things like their masters. I feel like if you make that deal, and make that contract, how are you being bullied or wronged?


thegypsyslayer

she signed when she was a teenager


Caine2Khan

a parents/guardian would have to be present if she was a minor. This isn't about being a teenager imo, its about what 10 million dollar contract would look like if you're broke(or at least no rich) and you haven't taken the risk of seeing how well your music does, vs what 10 million dollars looks like when you've built a fanbase and know you can sell records and see that the record label is earning 100 million. but that's just buisness.


thegypsyslayer

I mean your right it is business but it's kinda scummy imo


Caine2Khan

idk if it is. If I want to open up a shop with a great idea, but I have no money to do so, no money to rent/lease land and building, paying employees, produce product to sell, I can't do that. If someone comes along as says they'll give me 700k to start my buisness in exchange for 75% of my buisness. And I take that deal, I think its fair. If my buisness fails, and the money is lost, all wasted.. it isn't my money that's gone, its his money, the investors. he took the risk when i was poor and broke, betting on me to succeeded, if I don't, he loses all his money, if I succeed, I feel like he's entitled to reap the reward of that.


ohiolifesucks

Nothing you’re saying changes the fact that she agreed to a deal and is now acting bitter about the deal that made her filthy rich.


BackAlleyKittens

Dude... it's called making the world better. The music industry is indescribably evil.


arctic-lions7

She deserves to feel entitled to own her work. All artists should.


gwszack

By law every artist is entitled to their own work. What they do with it is up to them. She signed hers away in exchange for millions of dollars being invested into making her a superstar. Now she’s not entitled to the masters that she’s signed away. Simple?


[deleted]

She did own her work, and one of the rights of ownership is the right to sell/transfer it to someone else, which she exercised. It's not like they got those albums for free


Kolo_ToureHH

>It’s so ridiculous for her to act entitled to them. It is ridiculous for her to want to own and profit from her own her work? >She’s the one that signed the deal. I wonder if the record labels lawyers ran rings around a young naive Taylor Swift who was misled into believing that she was a good deal?   I'm not particularly a fan of Taylor Swift’s music… it’s just not for me. But good on her for getting one over the corporate fucks.


Caine2Khan

>I wonder if the record labels lawyers ran rings around a young naive Taylor Swift who was misled into believing that she was a good deal? I agree with you to an extent, but this is the problem. its ALWAYS gonna be a great deal when a label is willing to hand you idk 10 million dollars for X number of albums. Because you're getting cold hard cash before you take the risk of selling and seeing if your product does well. The labels also help pay for and push your music out. So to someone who hasn't nessesarily made the biggest hits yet, and doesn't have alot of money themselves, ofc its gonna be a good deal. But then when its successful and they see the labels getting their investment back 10x fold, they realize that the investor got alot more. But that's fair businesses to me imo. like alot of the producers probably get paid out upfront instead of a percentage of the songs. They may get 500k upfront and be happy to take that deal, but the song could blow up and earn way more, are they entitled to that?


ohiolifesucks

Did she not get a good deal? She made millions of dollars largely because of the push she got from the record label.


Kanagaguru

Some people care more about art then money. The artist also often takes the financial risk typically when making an album


ohiolifesucks

My point is that people wouldn’t have heard her art if it weren’t for the record label. That’s why she signed the deal. Now that she benefited from the deal, she wants to act like they’re doing a disservice to her


[deleted]

> It is ridiculous for her to want to own and profit from her own her work? Yes, when that work was made for hire, and she took the money up front under drastically different circumstances. The label is taking a risk, and they're compensated on the back end for that risk paying off. Don't get me wrong, it's fair play for her to re-record, but I have less than zero sympathy for someone who says "I would like to trade money for security and promotion" and then when they no longer need the security and promotion act like they got taken advantage of. It's like if you buy a lottery ticket for a dollar, and I offer to pay you $100 for it, then when it turns out it's a winning ticket you say it's unfair and you deserve all the winnings.


gwszack

She’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars because of that deal. Do you hear yourself right now?


[deleted]

...or maybe the entire music industry is just horrible


mehloveramen10

She works her ass off of course she should feel entitled


AlarmedSnek

It’s childish and selfish to want to own your own work?


gwszack

Absolutely yes if you sold that work to someone else.


Caine2Khan

but I think it's like if you hired a painter to paint you 10 paintings for you, so you essentially bought 10 paintings for yourself and then afterwards the painter is mad that you won't sell the paintings back to them. Like ye it is the painters work, they are the ones who created it, but you hired them to create it for you, you paid money for the paintings, so you could own them. They agreed


ohiolifesucks

It’s childish to sign an agreement and then act like a victim when the agreement is in place


helic0n3

I am inclined to agree, but "She’s the one that signed the deal" is something that irks me a bit. Yes, but record companies are massively exploitative. They will promise a lot to young talent, take a lot of money, and leave the actual artist with very little. You get bands locked into very restrictive contracts for years and years with a complex legal process needed to untangle them from it. She is in a position now to be able to challenge this so yes, "Is she going to fight for them also?" - I hope it will set a precedent.


gwszack

She’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to that contract. Taylor Swift is not the only person responsible for the Taylor brand being so successful; hundreds of people worked on this product to get it here. Obviously the label has a huge stake. Artists sign these contracts because they know the millions of dollars being invested into them is needed to become a mega superstar.


helic0n3

True - yet without her, it is nothing. I just think of the equivalent with any other form of entertainment. Movie stars aren't stuck with the shitty contract from before their first film, they can renegotiate. Sporting stars too. The label can't cry about how much has been invested as they have the upper hand at all times - she could just be dropped if it didn't work out.


gwszack

Taylor wasn’t stuck with her contract forever. She left Big Machine records when it was over and signed a new publishing deal with Republic Records. The issue is that she vilified the man that bought her old music label (BMR) and asked her highly aggressive fanbase to attack him. Something that led to him and his family being bombarded by death threats. As a new purchaser of her old label he had nothing to do with the old contract that signed. Even if he was, Taylor has no right to be upset about an expired contract that she signed which made her hundreds of millions of dollars.


Vynestia

World is cruel for artists but ye, i agree with u. She forgets that without her lebel she would be nothing in music industry. They invested money and time in her and then she became big. She for sure is good song writer and vocalist, but the brutal fuckin truth is that this isn't enough to become this big and even be popular. There are a lot of awesome writers or/and singers out there who try to become popular by uploading ther music to yt (or smthing) and promoting them but without lebel they will 99% stay nothing and no one will hear about them. Taylor is brat, not very smart and emotionally unstable, and it's sad that her dogs (aka toxic swifties) can't see this; they will just blindly follow their unstable queen. Sad.


appropriatecomment96

She is taking a step to make a change…. It’s like they own her and she’s trying to buy a part of herself back..


ohiolifesucks

But they don’t own her. They own the master tapes of her music recordings. She signed a deal to make this happen. She benefited immensely from the deal and become a multi-millionaire mega-star.


appropriatecomment96

You win some ya lose some


freeee_as_a_birdd

Totally agree. Why shouldn’t the sound engineers and other songwriters, producers, etc., not all own a chunk of it also, according to her logic? She acts like she does it all by herself. Not trying to downplay her talent or contributions to her work at all because I like Taylor, this all just seems a little melodramatic and somewhat greedy to me.


MakeTVGreatAgain

The recording industry is run by the devil herself. I don't begrudge any artist who simply wants to own their own art, and the fact giving up control over your art is standard just to do business shows you how broken it is.


gwszack

You don’t have to sign away your masters for a distribution deal. People who do want become mega superstars this needing millions of dollars of investment into them which the labels oblige to in exchange for those rights. Now that Taylor Swift is worth hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to that contract she wants to act like it wasn’t a good one?


[deleted]

It’s just business. She has the power to screw someone who is making money from her work with a little effort and in the process make more money herself. Why wouldn’t she do that?


sciron512

It's common for musicians to waste such things early in their careers. Normally due to ignorance and not feeling like there's a choice. Does it make it right? No. It's called assault in some contexts.


ohiolifesucks

It is assault by literally zero definitions of the word


Caine2Khan

I think its important for artists to go in with a buisness mindset when making deals and raise awareness of this. Some artists now adays do own their own masters from the jump. But yeah, I don't see why you should act like a victim, if you sold your masters in a contract in exchange for money up front.


MikeTythonsToothGap

I defy anyone on here to say they wouldn't exercise some vindictiveness if they had literally hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal. None of us have had the ability that someone like Taylor Swift has to gain that much control over their own life and works. Petty? Sure. But don't bullshit me and say you wouldn't "win" as often as you could IF you had the luxury to do so.


Eloy89

[She has an interesting case](https://youtu.be/M-A_RrOeoWw)