From Harvard Law Today: Taylor’s Version of copyright At a Harvard Law School event, an expert in digital exploitation of intellectual property says Taylor Swift singlehandedly shifted composition copyright considerations

Tying together stuff we're talking about in class with Taylor Swift.

It's what I do.

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In 2005, a teenaged Taylor Swift signed on to the Big Machine record label and became a global superstar by the time she left the company in 2018. By that time, she’d recorded six albums for the label, all multimillion sellers.

Soon afterward, Big Machine was purchased by her longtime business nemesis — “to Swifties, the hated Scooter Braun,” as Greenstein called him. (The two had longstanding bad blood, and Swift had referred to Braun as a bully and a manipulator). Braun in turn sold Big Machine, including the Swift albums it owned, to another company, Shamrock Holdings, for $420 million. Greenstein said that he was involved in the Big Machine deal but was not free to share details.

Rather than buy into this agreement, Swift announced she would remake the albums. Under her new record deal with Universal Music Group, she’d now own whatever masters she produced. Because she is usually the main songwriter, she would already have rights to the musical works. As the author and owner of her newest masters, Swift now has majority control of her work. Hence, Greenstein said, he’d need to pay Swift royalties if he played one of her songs during the lecture.

No major artist had previously invested the time and energy to re-record their catalogue, but Swift’s move paid off, as the new versions were major commercial and critical successes. When Greenstein asked the class whether they listened to the originals or to Taylor’s Version, most picked the latter.

“Does that sound good to Shamrock Holdings?” he asked, to negative response. “Congratulations,” Greenstein said, “You just passed Contracts 101.”

As a result, he said, Shamrock now owned something far less valuable. They could still sell the original albums, but there is now less demand for them. And because Swift holds licensing rights as the creator of the musical work, she can make sure that the lucrative licensing deals (for movies, television, etc.) go to her own versions rather than Big Machine’s.