On February 11, Taylor Swift announced that she had rerecorded her 2008 album Fearless under the official title Fearless (Taylor’s Version). One song off the album, “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” was released the next day. Fearless was Swift’s first number one album and “Love Story” was her second top 10 hit song. Swift expects to rerecord Taylor’s Version of all six albums from her 2006 debut Taylor Swift to 2017’s reputation.

This plan came about because of the master recordings of Swift’s first six albums. In 2018, Swift left Big Machine Records, the label to which she had been attached, and signed a contract with Universal Music Group. In 2019, around the time she was ready to release her seventh album, Lover, the company of talent manager Scooter Braun bought out Big Machine and a dispute over the master recordings for Swift’s albums erupted. Swift’s desire for total artistic authority over her work is well known, and so the masters for every album she produces under contract with Universal Music are hers.

To put it another way, a master represents the rights to a recording. This is not the same thing as the intellectual property rights, or rights to the work itself. This means that, if you were to write a song and record it under contract with a record label, what can be done with the recorded song is a different issue altogether. The master’s rightsholder can sell that recording as an album and profit from it on streaming services. They can also sign off on the rights to the recording for use in movies, TV or video games. By contrast, the songwriter maintains their own separate right to give permission for cover versions. If you want to record a song using someone else’s lyrics and melody, you naturally seek permission from the person who wrote them. As Swift was involved in the writing of every song she has released, she can give herself permission to cover them. More importantly, a newly recorded cover also produces a new master. This is where the idea for rerecording comes from.

But this raises a question: Won’t the masters for the original versions still be around? Indeed. Previously, Prince and Def Leppard rerecorded some of their work to make new masters, but those were tactical decisions—weapons of negotiation against their record labels. However, considering Swift’s reason for rerecording, there is a good chance she will go further than just using them as a negotiation tool, and in the best-case scenario, her updated recordings could replace the original masters in the music industry going forward. The market’s shift in focus to streaming is the greatest variable. Unlike with physical releases, you can stream Taylor’s Version instead of the original completely free of additional charge. Streaming also makes it harder for those who have the original masters to retaliate. In the past, one typical way record labels would burden artists who had left their companies was to produce greatest hits albums without the artists’ permission. The tactic was even more effective if executed just before the artist released their own new album. In the streaming era, however, the best-of album no longer holds much power. It may have been a fair assumption during the album age that people would more readily open their wallets for a greatest hits collection full of old favorites than for a new album. Above all, Swift’s dedicated fanbase are likely to agree with her vision and accept Taylor’s Version as the new original. Anyone who makes a film or game and wants to use her music, any artists who seek to sample her, and all radio broadcasters will definitely feel the pressure, the reason being that there are no drastic changes to “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” from the original. Paradoxically, the absence of any major difference between Taylor’s version and the original imbues it with that much more influence.

There is one more question, too: What about the charts and awards ceremonies? The answer is actually simpler than it is with remixes or songs that feature other artists. Rerecorded songs and albums are considered separate from their original versions, so any upcoming Taylor’s Versions are eligible to chart anew. Awards ceremonies are no different: As long as she is interested, Swift is allowed to submit her new versions for nomination. Of course, whether the rerecordings will receive votes on artistic merit is another story.

Masters are a label’s most important right, and the music industry is naturally watching the success of “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” closely. The results have been encouraging: The song was streamed 13.7 million times in the week after its release and was first in the country music category. Plays of the original version of “Love Story” also went up 30%, for a weekly total of 3.4 million. The anticipation that even the original would benefit from the rerecording has already proven true, as listeners unsurprisingly compare the two versions. Taylor’s Version is only just beginning, though, with many years left to go. It is already receiving considerable airplay on the radio. If Taylor’s Version is elevated in status to the market’s de facto master, Swift will have opened a whole new dimension in the history of musicians’ rights.

TRIVIA

Music copyright
Copyright of musical works is notorious for being convoluted. Specifically, it is divided between composition and master recording. Composition rights are granted to the writer of the melody and lyrics, while rights to the master translates to ownership of a specific recording. Ordinarily the record label handles the rights to the master and they typically own it as well. The songwriter retains rights to the composition, most often managed under contract with a publishing company. The details of both sets of rights differ by contract and dictate how profits from sales, streaming and performances, as well as permissions surrounding commercial uses like cover versions and sampling, are determined.