Copyright Law (Taylor’s Version)

Above: Poster from the Eras Tour. ID 308589233 © Ignisign | Dreamstime.com

Whether you know her as a country sweetheart or a pop phenomenon, you’ve heard of Taylor Swift. The legendary musician rose to stardom in her teenage years, gaining acclaim for her relatable lyrics and exceptional storytelling ability. Currently, Swift is on her Eras Tour, named for its setlists with songs spanning her entire discography. But wait—you might ask—hasn’t Taylor Swift released music for over fifteen years at this point? Why is she performing so much old music on her tour?

The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly for Swift, involves bad blood. In 2005, Swift entered into a contract with Big Machine, a record label that would promote Swift’s music in exchange for owning the rights to her recordings. Fourteen years later, Big Machine decided to sell Swift’s master recordings. When Swift could not reach an agreement to buy her recordings from the record label, Big Machine sold the rights to Ithaca Holdings, a company owned by Scooter Braun. Swift had crossed paths with Braun before and claimed that he “bullied” her. Voicing her frustration with the sale on Tumblr, Swift revealed that Braun had refused to let her use the masters in an upcoming documentary. In response, Kelly Clarkson suggested that Swift re-release her music, changing the branding so that fans would purchase the new recordings instead of the Ithaca Holdings masters. And it seems that Swift took this advice to heart because, over the past few years, she has re-released four of her old albums.

So, how can Taylor Swift re-release music if she lacks the legal rights to the original masters? Here’s where intellectual property comes into play. Songs typically involve three different layers of copyrights. First, there’s the copyright to the sound recording or master, which is usually held by the record label. Second, a song will have a musical composition copyright. Essentially, this covers the song’s sheet music—its harmony, melody, and rhythm. Lastly, there are lyric copyrights, which protect a song’s words from being used in books, articles, and other published material.

In the case of Swift’s earlier music, Ithaca Holdings owned the copyrights to the masters, but Swift retained the rights to the musical composition and lyrics. These copyrights allowed her to re-release songs from old albums as long as she produced different sound recordings and waited five years from the original release dates (a contractual obligation). By performing older songs on her Eras Tour, Swift encourages fans to buy her versions of the recordings and gets them excited for the next re-releases.

Whenever Swift re-releases a song, she adds the addendum “(Taylor’s Version).” This parenthetical serves multiple functions. First, from a legal standpoint, it reduces the trademark risks of creating a recording with the same name as the original master. Second, the tag helps fans identify the Taylor-approved versions, thus reducing the sales of the other recordings.

Ultimately, Swift’s decision to re-release her music has paid off. She has earned millions of dollars from the new versions, decreased the sales of the Ithaca Holdings masters, and successfully used her Eras Tour to promote the whole venture. However, her maneuver has garnered the attention of record labels, which are revising their contract terms accordingly. While a three to five-year waiting period before re-release was the industry standard, record labels now aim to increase that period to twenty or thirty years, prolonging the sale of their masters. Such a change could reshape the music industry, but that seems almost inevitable; Swift can’t help making waves whatever she does. Her Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour of all time, and people from Tokyo to London love singing along to her catchy lyrics. That’s music (Taylor’s Version).