Taylor Swift locked in her billionaire status before buying rights to early albums for $464m
NEW YORK - Taylor Swift has gained control of all of her life's work, in what she called her 'greatest dream come true'.
A growing fortune may have helped her realise that years-long goal.
The American pop superstar announced on May 30 that she had acquired the rights to her first six albums, a culmination of a lengthy battle to own her entire catalogue. She did not disclose the terms, but Billboard reported that she paid around US$360 million (S$464 million).
'To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually to be pretty reserved about it,' she wrote. '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, 35, has seen a personal windfall equal to that figure in just the past 19 months alone. Her net worth currently stands at US$1.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, up about US$300 million from October 2023, when she was in the middle of her blockbuster Eras Tour that made her a billionaire for the first time.
While she has framed her fight to reclaim her earlier work as a deeply personal pursuit, she also now stands to profit from licensing her songs in the future.
'She's in the 1 per cent of artistes who have the leverage to work out deals her own way,' said Ralph Jaccodine, a professor of music business and management at Boston's Berklee College of Music. 'She can license them and all the money comes back to her. She can give them away. She can do whatever she wants with her copyrights.'
While Swift wrote the songs on her first six albums - Taylor Swift (2006), Fearless (2008), Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), 1989 (2014) and Reputation (2017) - her former record label Big Machine Label Group owned the actual recordings that made her famous.
It sold those to American record executive Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings LLC in June 2019, as part of a larger deal. After Swift spoke out about her lack of approval of the deal, Ithaca Holdings sold those rights to American private equity firm Shamrock Capital for about US$300 million in 2020.
That prompted Swift to announce that she would re-record her earlier work – the source of the now-ubiquitous 'Taylor's Version' albums – in an effort to undercut the originals' popularity and value.
In a letter on her website on May 30, the singer said she now controls all of her work, including photography, album art, videos and unreleased songs. Her recordings are among the most valuable assets in the music business.
'I'm extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artistes and fans,' she wrote. 'Every time a new artiste tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I'm reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen.'
'We are thrilled with this outcome and so happy for Taylor,' Shamrock posted on its Linkedin page. 'I am happy for her,' Braun said in a separate statement.
At a time when many artistes don't own the masters of their work and can't fully leverage their recordings, Swift is one of the rare few who stands to gain from the ongoing popularity of her chart-topping hits. In addition to the first six albums, she owns the the master recordings of five new albums made since 2018 and four re-recorded albums.
The bulk of Swift's fortune comes from the value of her catalogue, and profits from ticket sales and merchandise. Bloomberg estimated in October 2023 that the latter was worth US$370 million, and that was before she completed the Eras Tour.
Touring is especially profitable for musicians since their cut of gross ticket sales is much higher than from streams or album sales, and they also receive revenue from merchandise sales. During the 21 months of the Eras Tour, Swift sold more than US$2 billion worth of tickets, and roughly 10 million people attended her shows. She also received an estimated US$130 million before taxes from the concert film she executive produced, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (2024). BLOOMBERG
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