Taylor Swift caused an industry stir with a Tumblr post decrying the sale of Big Machine to a company owned by the music manager Scooter Braun. Photo / AP
Prince, Janet Jackson and Jay-Z all fought to control their master recordings. In a blog post about the sale of her former record label, Swift put her personal spin on the issue.
It is one of the oldest and hardest lessons of the music industry: No matter how successful an artist may be, chances are someone else owns their work.
Prince, protesting how his label, Warner Bros., had control over his master recordings, quipped in 1996: "If you don't own your masters, your master owns you." That same year, when Janet Jackson negotiated a landmark contract with Virgin Records, ownership of her original recordings was a major deal point.
Now we can add Taylor Swift to the chorus of artists who have bemoaned that her creative work is someone else's property, as she once again used her social-media megaphone to stir debate about the inner workings of the music industry.
In a Tumblr post Sunday, Swift responded bitterly to the news that her former label, Big Machine, had been sold for more than US$300 million to a company run by Scooter Braun, the manager of pop stars including Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.
Swift had strong personal objections to the deal, which included the rights to her first six albums, blaming Braun for orchestrating "incessant, manipulative bullying" against her by Kanye West, an on-and-off client.
But the episode also highlighted the fraught and little-understood industry politics of master recordings — the original copies of an artist's work — and the copyrights associated with them.
The owner of a master controls all rights to exploit it, including selling albums or licensing songs for movies or video games. The artist still earns royalties from those recordings once associated costs are fulfilled, but controlling the master could bring greater income, as well as a level of protection over how the work is used in the future. (These rights are separate from copyrights for songwriting.)
The deep significance that musicians attach to their masters was highlighted last month, when a group of artists sued the Universal Music Group over a fire in 2008 that destroyed many original recordings, after an exposé was published in The New York Times Magazine.
Historically, record companies have retained rights to masters in exchange for the financial risks they take in backing an artist over the course of their contract.
"Fundamentally, the business model that most record companies operate under is not unlike the venture capital business," said Larry Miller, the director of the music business program at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
"They make investments in unproven talent," he added. "The trade is that, traditionally, the masters stay with the record company."
Swift, despite appearing to have an almost unrivaled level of self-determination as a star — like single-handedly getting Apple to change a royalties policy in 2015 — signed such a deal with Big Machine in 2005, at the beginning of her career. Her post Sunday was partly an admonishment to young artists to avoid those kinds of contracts.
"This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term 'loyalty' is clearly just a contractual concept," Swift wrote, in a jab at Big Machine's founder, Scott Borchetta.
Hours later, Borchetta posted a rejoinder, including a snippet of a deal proposal, that suggested that Swift could have earned her recording rights back had she renewed with Big Machine last year. Instead, she signed with Universal. (Her next album, Lover, is due in August.)
Borchetta also called into question Swift's claim that she only learned of the deal once the news broke — he said he texted her the night before — and noted that her father, Scott Swift, was a minority shareholder in Big Machine.
The barbs between Swift and Borchetta, a rare example of such contractual dirty laundry being aired outside of litigation, captivated the industry and raised questions about the age-old power dynamic between artist and label.
"This kind of deal is neither unusual or controversial," media mogul David Geffen said. "She didn't want to put up $300 million. Someone else did. They offered her a deal that she rejected to get ownership of her masters. Only time will tell who made the wise decision."
Geffen, whom Braun has frequently described as a mentor, added: "I'm betting that Scooter will build an important company with the addition of this asset."
Steve Stoute, a music and advertising executive whose new company, UnitedMasters, allows artists to keep their rights, saw the Swift episode as a painful illustration of what he called "the fundamental problem with the record industry."
"The record business historically runs the same business model as sharecropping," Stoute said. "You build it; we make you think that you own it; you act like you own it; but at the end of the day, we own it."
The battle between Swift and Braun also divided celebrities on social media, as accusations of exploitation intermingled with personal loyalties.
Some of Braun's clients, like Bieber and Demi Lovato, defended his personal character. "I have dealt with bad people in this industry and Scooter is not one of them," Lovato wrote on Instagram.
But other female artists took Swift's lead as an opportunity to discuss their own experiences in a business that has long faced criticism for its treatment of many creators, especially young women and people of color.
"I signed contracts when I was 15 & I'm still paying the consequences for it," singer Sky Ferreira, now 26, wrote on Instagram after pointing people to Swift's blog post. "Insisting on your rights, value & ownership doesn't make you difficult." She added: "Just because this system has been the same for decades doesn't mean it's okay or you need to bow down to it."
In a statement expressing support for Swift, pop singer Halsey wrote: "it turns my guts that no matter how much power or success a woman has in this life, you are still susceptible to someone coming along and making you feel powerless out of spite." Alessia Cara chimed in: "stop stealing from women who work hard!!!"
And rapper Iggy Azalea, while interacting with fans on Twitter, added: "this is why I'm so happy to own my master for this new album, they really do ppl crazy dirty on ownership of their intellectual property in the biz." After years of limbo on major labels, Azalea recently announced a deal with distributor Empire that gave her ownership of her recordings.
Tension over the ownership of recordings is nearly as old as the industry, but it has gained momentum as superstar artists have exerted greater control — typically after years of work. Prince rebelled against Warner Bros. in the mid-1990s, after nearly two decades of hits. And when Jay-Z became president and chief executive of the Def Jam label in 2004, he insisted on earning back control of his masters on that label.
The industry's shift to streaming has begun to change the dynamic between artists and labels, which once held exceptional leverage through their ability to market albums and promote songs to radio stations. Given this change, some younger artists have leaned toward autonomy.
The singer and rapper XXXTentacion, for example, who was killed in a shooting last year, rejected traditional long-term label deals in favor of one-off contracts for each of his releases that offered lower payment upfront, but gave him full ownership and a higher royalty rate.
Swift's talent for fueling debate continued on Tumblr — the platform where she frequently communes with her most faithful fans — well after she published her account of the deal. "taylor will not be silenced," wrote one fan who earned acknowledgement from Swift.
Elsewhere, some questioned whether Swift, with her enormous wealth and reputation for careful self-mythologising, was the best messenger for this ongoing battle, especially after Borchetta pushed back, sharing deal points and private text messages between the two parties.
But the power of Swift's fame made her message about the importance of ownership a vital lesson, Stoute said.
"If you're an artist today, you must go into the record deal owning your master," he said. "If not, then you are basically building an asset that you will not own."
Written by: Ben Sisario and Joe Coscarelli
© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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