Taylor Swift reclaims master recordings, credits ‘Eras Tour’ success

Popstar Taylor Swift has reclaimed the rights to the master recordings of her first six albums.

In a personal letter uploaded on her website, Swift announced that she was able to finally buy back ownership of her music from Shamrock Capital, the private equity firm that purchased them from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2020. 

According to Billboard, Swift paid an amount relatively close to how much Shamrock bought the catalog from Ithaca. Sources tell Billboard it was around US 360 million.

Swift began re-recording her albums “to restore control over her songs in a commercial standpoint.” In April 2021, she released Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) in November. In 2023, she followed it with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version).

“I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” Swift said. 

After leaving Big Machine Records, which Ithaca Holdings bought in 2019, Swift released five more albums on Republic Records: Lover (2019), Folkore (2020), Evermore (2020), Midnights (2022) and The Tortured Poets Department(2024). She also embarked on the highest-grossing concert Eras Tour, to which she credits as the reason why she was able to buy back her music.

“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it. To my fans, you know how important this has been to me — so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released four of my albums, calling them Taylor’s Version. The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned The Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music. I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now,” she added.

She expressed her gratitude to Shamrock Capital for offering the deal and making the interaction “honest, fair and respectful.”

“This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams. I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”

Swift mentioned that she hasn’t re-recorded a quarter of Reputation, the album that was so specific to that time of her life.

“I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in the first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”

She already completely re-recorded her entire debut album. It, as well as Reputation TV, will “re-emerge when the time is right.”