Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
How did Taylor Swift close one of the biggest deals of her career? With help from her mom and little brother.
Swift gave a behind-the-scenes look at how she was able to buy back her music masters during an episode of “New Heights,” the podcast hosted by her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason Kelce.
The episode aired on Wednesday and had over 1.3 million viewers on YouTube as of this writing.
Swift, who bought her masters earlier this year for a reported $360 million, said she’d been saving for that moment since she was a teenager.
“It’s always been a huge thing for me. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been actively saving up money to buy my music back and to ever own it in the first place because it’s usually the label that owns it,” she said. “I’ve always wanted this to happen.”
Swift said she signed a record deal when she was 15 and that typically, such deals are set up so the artist does not own their master recordings: “Owning your master records means that you have complete control and power over distribution, licensing, and essentially the way your legacy is shaped,” she said.
The masters for Swift’s first six albums had several owners over the years, including Big Machine Records and Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings. She said the first time they were sold, it “really ripped my heart out of my chest.”
“I thought about not owning my music every day. It was like an intrusive thought that I had every day,” she said.
That motivated her to rerecord the albums, releasing them one at a time with the appended title of “Taylor’s Version.” She released four of the rerecorded albums before buying back her masters this year.
The rereleases were a huge success for Swift. They were praised by critics and loved by fans, garnering more streams than the original versions.
Buying her music back after the Eras Tour
After the Eras Tour, Swift said her team thought it might be a good time to approach the then-owners of her masters, a private equity firm called Shamrock Capital, to see if she could buy her music outright.
“I don’t want to be in a partnership. I don’t want to own 30% of it. I want to own all of it,” she said. “But it was a long shot to think that they would do that — that they would sell that asset to me.”
Swift said she wanted to approach the purchase from a personal place because it was more than a business transaction to her. So rather than sending a team of lawyers or managers, Swift said she sent her mom and brother, who she said she also works with, to meet with Shamrock Capital.
“They told them the whole story — of all the times we’ve tried to buy it, all the times it’s fallen through, all the times we had gotten plans together and figured out something we thought was going to work and it didn’t at the last minute,” she said.
Eventually, some time after the meeting and a couple of months after the Super Bowl, Swift said she got the call from her mom.
“She’s like, ‘You got your music.’ And I just very dramatically hit the floor, for real,” Swift said. “Like, honestly, just started bawling my eyes out, and I’m just like weeping.”
“This changed my life. I can’t believe it still,” she added.
Swift announced her coming album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” in a preview clip from the podcast that was shared shortly after midnight on Tuesday.
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