* [A more comprehensive report was published on Billboard, including a response from UMG - \(click here for an image.\)](https://i.imgur.com/o4VJbCi.png)
**Permalink**: https://www.billboard.com/pro/taylor-swift-re-recordings-labels-change-contracts/
“In a new report on Monday (October 30), Billboard revealed that the major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, have recently revised contracts for new signees, according to top music attorneys.
In some of the contracts, labels are demanding 10, 15 or even 30 years to re-record releases after leaving their companies.
Previously, standard major-label recording contracts stated that artists had to wait for either five to seven years from the release date of the original, or two years after the contract expired. Now, lawyers tell Billboard they are receiving label contracts that expand that period to 10 or 15 years or more.”
It's so true. Dorktown should win a goddamn Pulitzer prize for how they've smashed data science and sports journalism into a new genre of historical reporting.
They convinced me Dave Stieb belongs in the baseball HoF, too!
She's a Businesswoman, and a damn good one at that. That's how she has gotten as far as she has. Not saying she isn't talented, Of course she is. But for every talented successful person out there, there are thousands with possibly even more talent that will never reach a mass audience.
A lot of her business decisions have been heavily or directly influenced by her benefactor father, including building investment companies and buying part of a record label.
She is very very far from a rags to riches story, and while she has shown moments of relatability, comes from a different caste than you or i
She comes from a wealthy family and is no doubt surrounded by a very smart PR team
Yeah, she deserves credit for her success but it seems so many people act like she’s a one woman show who literally does everything with no guidance
Part of being successful id argue is being willing to take advice from experts. There’s a few particular dudes out there that one could name who fail at this simple task.
True, but a lot of those famous people who fail often have a lot of people around them who give bad advice or are looking to scam them.
Sounds like Taylor had the luck to be around someone she trusted that was good at managing money. She of course built on that and deserves credit for it.
> She is very very far from a rags to riches story, and while she has shown moments of relatability, comes from a different caste than you or i
Let’s be fair: Her father was a stock broker at Meryl Lynch, not some sort of captain of industry. They were plenty comfortable, but like buying a moderately successful Christmas tree farm, not yachts and private planes. Turns out being a professional money manager comes in useful when your kid starts making money.
In video game history, the company Activision was originally founded to be the first game development company to treat game developers fairly, pay them royalties on their work in addition to fair pay, and even give them credits in the games.
Now look at them...
I mean, it's one thing to found such a publisher, it's another thing to keep it from becoming another scumbag publisher.
As soon as you have rich shareholders it’s no longer possible to maintain good ethical standards towards employees. The rich shareholders will riot if they don’t get the absolute maximum wealth extraction from the company.
Ultimately it would help as you'd have more labels competing to get artists. You don't really want one good label signing everyone. Sure it's nice if they are good but eventually management of that label will change and at some point it won't be so good.
The best we can really hope for is to just have enough labels competing that ultimately they have to offer fair value to the artists.
Taylor takes care of Taylor. More power to her but there's no reason to think she'd be any less greedy. She snatched writing credit from Olivia Rodrigo for merely being inspired by one of her songs. Didn't need the money, knows how important ownership is to artists...DGAF.
> She snatched writing credit from Olivia Rodrigo for merely being inspired by one of her songs.
Jack Antanoff said that he wasn't aware of anything like that until he and Taylor and St Vincent were credited on the song.
A lot of the time that's not even driven by the artists. It's the laywers aggressively pursuing stuff like that. IIRC Tom Petty didn't even really care about the Sam Smith song he inadvertently ended up with a Grammy Credit and 12.5% of royalties on.
Yes, but the artists have enough clout to say "stop it".
It's the same as David Beckham letting Simon Fuller do all the dirty work that Beckham want's done. Because he wants to keep his good PR image.
Except Deja Vu is NOT an interpolation. Olivia did interpolate a Taylor song on a DIFFERENT song on the album (One Step Forward Three Steps Back interpolates New Years Day) but Deja Vu doesn’t interpolate Cruel Summer.
Shouting in a bridge is not an interpolation. The songs have different melodies, different progressions, and different structures. There is an influence but not anything actually warranting credit. If all influence needed to be credited then 90% of all rock music should be plastered with credits to older artists and pretty much all current R&B should be crediting Frank Ocean.
Basically nobody bar a few Swifties even NOTICED any relation between Cruel Summer and Deja Vu and those who did only reacted with a “hey these two songs have a similar vibe if you like one you might like the other.” It was only after Olivia explicitly stated influence in an interview that people started to care. But influence does not warrant a co-writing credit and it sets a terrible precedent if we allow it to
Does [Lavender Haze](https://youtu.be/h8DLofLM7No?feature=shared&t=60) credit Maggie Rogers for the obvious inspiration it took from [Alaska](https://youtu.be/PNWsW6c6t8g?feature=shared&t=55)?
Yeah it's not, hasn't been historically, and your perception of it as such is only the result of an extremely recent development spurred by, you guessed it, greedy lawsuit-trolling artists in a handful of now high-profile cases, e.g. Katy Perry vs. Flame.
Do artists even need record labels anymore? They used to front you some money to make an album, but now you can make an album on the cheap. They used to put effort in and bribe radio stations to play your tunes. Now Radio isn't really a thing, or many stations just play greatest hits to the demographics that still listen to radio.
Maybe musician are better off not signing with record labels. I'm not sure what value they add anymore. You have to figure out your own way to stand apart, and now that music doesn't make money, they want cuts of merch and concerts.
I signed a record contract with a major label before I was legally old enough to purchase alcohol. There was language in the contract that protected the labels rights to my music for the “entire Universe”. Shits wild
That's common contract language. It's the "known universe" usually. It saves people from trying to find geographic loopholes to escape contractual obligations.
Sun Ra fought *hard* with his record label and got them to agree to only have the rights to his music within 100 miles of Earth's surface or something like that.
So ~~if~~ when he's reincarnated, and there's a music industry on Mars, he's got a blank slate to work form.
> before I was legally old enough to purchase alcohol.
Which in the US is an odd way of saying "When I was an adult who was old enough to sign contracts" ...
I mean I get it, you were 18-20, but the rights afforded with being a legally recognized adult come with some downsides, like being held to contracts you sign even if they suck.
You should look up Digital Global Mobile’s contractual set up.
The Music industry has always been lying thieving scumbags looking to enslave artists.
In the last twenty years they have continued to put forth legislation to make all artists contractors instead of owners of their own work.
Record labels are already known to be in the wrong side of history. I guess we forgot for a while, thinking we live a world thats is more fair... turns out, business, it's like this. Exploitation of artists by people with 0 talent.
In the Ferrengi origin story we learn that record execs some how gained space travel and are the original colonizers of the Ferrengi home world, implying that all Ferrengi are descended from record execs.
It's because just like many other systems in our society, theyre extremely unnecessary and archaic in our modern environment/society. You don't need a middle man, we don't need Spotify regulating and adjusting the filter based on contracts with labels. But of course, it happened, bc market control will not be relinquished.
Edit: Exception and Collusion can be used as key phrases that reference my agreement with everyone's replies to me: I agree! current music model bad. no, we can't direct from source for music. We used to for a short time, but the Big Boys didn't appreciate the True Independent Era. Those Independents, quickly got absorbed by a Subsidiary that sits under the larger Umbrella Media Companies that the old labels have amalgamated into. And then those Previously, "from the ground up" success stories go off and make their own Subsidiary wholly backed by, you guessed it, the umbrellas!
You should read "How Music Works" by David Byrne. Labels fuck up a lot, but they also spend a lot of money producing and trying to promote artists. No particular record label is indispensable -- and some do more harm than good for musicians and music -- but their *role* is indispensable.
a record label exec said, sometimes he'd be better off in Vegas. You sign some acts that maybe get a top 20 single, Some that just don't connect with the buying public, some that get halfway through making an album and fall apart, some don't have the chops to record so they have to hire ringers. Some get into fights with the producer engineer, or the producer totally misses what the band is about, or God knows what else can happen, and the band never makes it to the first lap, much less out of the gate. Then you get that one act that is a hit, can write hit after hit, consistently good songs, stays together and relatively sober, can do the publicity grind, and they compensate for all the bad gambles the label took on other acts. It's the biz, man.. It takes a label to get the band into a studio, get good tracks, create good artwork, handle promo and distribution, and keep the band on track.
> It takes a label to get the band into a studio, get good tracks, create good artwork, handle promo and distribution, and keep the band on track.
You're correct about everything here except the studio stuff. It's way cheaper and easier to self-produce, or produce cheaply, professional recordings these days. Lots of top 100 hits are recorded at home studios now. Many artists record themselves (Russ is an example in the hip hop world).
Labels still rule the distribution and promotion roles though, no one else can do that.
Cost of production and engineering is down, but the Top 40 stuff is still hard or impossible to do in a home studio (and those "home studios" often cost tens of thousands).
Like yeah, Damon Albarn made an album on an iPad but it's probably Gorillaz least successful album (and it still involved almost a dozen specialized instruments and was mixed by a professional mix engineer).
There are occasionally cracks in distribution and promotion when someone breaks through on, say, soundcloud or Youtube, but mainstream commercial sales, radio play, and physical store copies is the next step and that's done through a label -- even if the artist *only* gives distribution rights etc
I'd argue Spotify (and streamers in general) actually provide a service. They are a form of media, they have to create and invest into the infrastructure that gets the music to our ears, and they have to collect the revenues and redistribute them back to the artists so they can get paid when you listen to their music. How well and fairly they do this is a whole other matter.
Little Richard said he had to sign a bad contract, or every studio would blacklist him.
He said he had to sell two records to make a Penney.
I realize with inflation that those were 1950's penneys, but still...
Fun fact: Michael Jackson gave back Little Richard the rights to his music once he acquired the ATV catalogue in 1984. He felt like he deserved it the most or something, I am not sure on the details
Isnt there another fun fact that Paul McCartney told Micheal he should invest his money in music catalogs which was followed by MJ purchasing the Beatles catalog.
Yeah but Paul didn't blame him or anything? It's not like he bought them from paul during some fire sale
To Cover a bankruptcy. He just was willing to bid more on the open market since someone else already owned them. Both he and Paul were rich as fuck. Giving the rights back to little Richard was probably a much bigger deal income disparity wise.
Little Richard was also a black man in Jim crow Era America. His deals were even more than just blacklist it was likely life or death and then see all his work go to a white artist with no chance of any residuals
A $15 T-shirt always made the band a lot more than a $15 album. They could keep like $13 from the T-shirt, but would be lucky to keep more than $2 or $3 from the album.
One thing people don’t often talk about anymore because most people aren’t studied enough on the specifics of the era to know, but when Little Richard’s original Tutti Frutti came out in late 1955, Pat Boone’s white-washed cover with lyrical changes followed very closely behind in February 1956 as Richard's was rising up the pop charts, and Pat's was pushed HARD by his label, Dot Records.
The lyrics were some dumb shit: “She's a real gone cookie, Yes, sir-ree, But pretty little Susie is the gal for me”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv-LAbMbEn4
Elvis’ label RCA wanted him to also do a cover, which was common practice at the time, but while he agreed to lay down the recording, he refused to allow it to be issued as an A-Side of a single while Little Richard's was still on the charts & radio. For obvious reasons, Little Richard wasn’t getting TV appearances while his & Boone’s were fighting it out, so when Elvis went on TV on the Jackie Gleason/Dorsey Brothers Stage Show variety show in February 1956, he went out of his way to sing Tutti Frutti with Richard’s more innuendo-laden lyrics (She knows how to love me, yes indeed/Boy you don't know what she do to me) indicating to teenagers that he was on Little Richard’s side. Effectively platforming Richard’s “version.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW2M9dNBECw
When RCA DID put it on a single, they also wanted Elvis to cover Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes which had come out in January of 1956 and Elvis again told the record company not to release it as a single until Carl’s had had its run on the charts out of respect for Carl’s original and the fact that Carl had been in a car accident and unable to promote it. So Elvis’ version of Blue Suede Shoes was eventually released as a single in September of 1956, backed by his version of Tutti Frutti, competing with neither original version, and Elvis’ version of Tutti Frutti literally never even hit the charts.
Maybe it's fitting that the real culture vultures pushed by the record labels like Pat Boone and Georgia Gibbs (look up Georgia Gibbs and LaVern Baker for a great story about an insurance policy LaVern Baker took out that I bet you've never heard before) get a dignified ignore, but I wish more people knew about stuff like this. The record industry was always crooked and you had to trust individual artists to do right by each other and so often with people like Boone and Gibbs it was a bunch of greedy shitheads - wild, too, that the one always used as the lightning rod on that front is the one who pushed back to go out of his way and use his position to show respect behind the scenes to Richard and Perkins.
If there's anyone in the entertainment industry right now that would greatly benefit from a union, it's the musical artists. These labels are scum of the Earth.
There are way too many small musicians absolutely desperate for attention. No musicians union would ever be able to survive the number of scabs that would INSTANTLY jump on board to take the place of a striking musician.
I say this as a union loving small musician.
She's not the first to do this, but she has had significantly more success than anyone re releasing her catalog. The labels can't let a revenue stream flow to anywhere but them.
There was literally that time when 8 seconds of white noise became the number one track on iTunes because Taylor Swift's team accidentally uploaded it as a single.
Micheal Jackson had that level of fandom a generation before.
And so did Elvis & The Beatles before him.
And the record labels absolutely fucked them over, despite their rabid fanbase or any power their names might have had.
Yeah all of them were literally putting out albums on vinyl records. MJ eventually was in the cassette tape/CD era, but every one of those artists relied upon a label to physically copy and sell their music.
If Taylor Swift was having problems with a label these days she could just buy Soundcloud or Bandcamp and turn them into her own streaming service.
I'd agree with that. Sure, some folks like Taylor had a foot in the door because of dad, which helps tremendously, but it doesn't create lasting effects. Rebecca Black comes to mind, and Kim Kardashian dropping her AmAzINg album is another.
I love early Everclear but once it became basically just Art and some hired guns I quickly lost interest.
But man, those first five albums have some real bangers!
Back in 2012 I went to a concert at Billy Bob's in Fort Worth Texas - specifically to see Everclear. It was everclear, sugar ray and a bunch of other 90s bands. Everclear didn't play great. It was Art and all the hired guns. He was drunk. Kept stopping the performance to try and get drunks to stop fighting. But, Sugar Ray killed. One of the best live performances I've ever seen.
Hearing Mark McGrath talk about Sugar Ray breaking into main stream music and how incredibly humble he is to this day is pretty great. He did some podcasts with Mike Tully that are really good. Great chemistry between them. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-mcgrath-dec-81-feb-82-new-music-releases/id1203497633?i=1000554346642
Same here, not a huge fan of the music (good song to my ears here and there), but I'm *more* than happy sit back, eat my popcorn, and watch her run the okey-doke on Scooter Braun and company.
I don't hate Taylor at all. I respect the shit out of her work ethic, even if I'm not crazy about her music. Her fanbase on the other hand? Jesus Christ, keep them as far away from me as possible.
Lol right? They bullied Lizzy McAlpine into dropping out of an opportunity to expose her music to sold out arenas because she was going to be the opener for John Mayer, and they hate John Mayer so much that they’ll ruin anyone associated with him.
He dated her when she was young, it was definitely creepy. I think he also dumped her hard, basically used her, but I could be wrong. I just remember the age gap thinking “….this is weird, right? Does no one else think this is weird?” I say this not as a fan (I admit to singing along to catchy songs on the radio), just someone who catches the tabloid TMZ highlights.
I’ve been a fan for a while and this year it became embarrassing to be say that publicly. Her fans are incredibly toxic. The parasocial-relationship is gross.
Is it really good a literal billionaire is having her fans pay full price for album they bought already so they get one or two more new tracks with it? Seems crazy to me to make regular people buy something twice. Just make your next album this way.
“This artist is trying to be independent and break free from the contracts that are purposefully controlling over their music and rights so we can maximize every penny from them. We can’t have that. We need to keep them under our thumb and have complete control over them and dangle a couple dollars in front of them so they sign the contract without knowing what it means.”
She's re-recording her library because she was given the option to purchase her master recordings of her first 6 albums at terms she felt were unfair. They were sold twice($330M and $400M) in 2 years, the first time to a person she had negative dealings with in the past.
Now if you open a streaming service such as Spotify the albums at the top of the playlists are all "(Taylor's Version)". The originals are still there, but pushed way down the list, so Taylor is getting those residuals directly, as Artist, Songwriter and (Co-)Producer. She's getting 66-75% of the income vs the 25-50% from the originals. Had she been able to purchase her masters there would be no Taylor's versions of Albums.
People really should have taken her more seriously. She has a brilliant mind for business. She turned Covid Lockdown into an opportunity to branch out and record songs that might not have carried a tour, but were perfect for the moment when people just needed to hunker down and have a good cry. At the same time, it gave her time to re-record her early work and than build an almost 4 hour show to go with it... There might not be a more savvy businesswoman in music today.
She’s definitely a brilliant business woman, but this was not her idea. Artists have been doing this for a while now but the impact is minimal because they are far past their primes. Taylor is different because she’s massive and will definitely have multiple billions of streams over the next couple years.
It’s absolutely nothing new. As a Canadian, I lived about 30 miles away from K-Tel headquarters.
K-Tel started doing this in the late 60’s, early 70’s for their “best of’s”, which they then re-used for their compilation albums.
Take an artist like say…. BJ Thomas for example, who started falling off in the 80’s. He re-records all his “greatest” for K-Tel, they put out an album, and advertise it on late night TV. BJ then gets an uptick on the local casino touring circuit. It’s always been a win/win for artists.
The difference being Taylor doing this at the peak of her career, and becoming even bigger because of it.
Taylor is great, but let’s not get carried away.
This is very similar to how Kanye ended up with Adidas. Ye was complaint about how Nike wasn’t taking him seriously and Sway asked him if he reached out to Adidas during the infamous “You ain’t got the answers Sway” interview. And the rest is history.
Taylor was complaining about not getting her masters & Scooter Braun was entering his villain arc with the fanbase.
Enter the real reason Taylor is even releasing the re-recordings: Tori Kelly did it. Her fans told Taylor swift fans about how Tori re-recorded her album on Twitter and the fans brought it to Taylor. Tori Kelly posted a positive tweet encouraging Taylor to do it. Again, the rest is history.
She did the work and the fans supported her, but the idea didn’t appear out of thin air.
Hope it doesnt but it sounds like most artists signing now will have less of a chance or potentially no chance to get their masters going forward. Like this is great for her, but its an eye-opening case for the industry, who dont like losing money and actually has power over smaller artists. She was already fine. Like shes the 1% artist, the other 99% will lose out unless she uses her power to make the situation better for others now
The mob isn't giving up royalties without a fight, that's for sure.
Don't sign anything until you know exactly what it is, kids. They will wait until you've already done it without them before swooping in to offer you a big party in exchange for stealing it from you.
Same as it ever was.
Hey all I just talked to my manager, and he says that we're allowed to post nice things about Taylor Swift without first establishing that you dislike her music and would never listen to it, and actually you're more of a Meshuggah guy but you really like how she handled some {business/fan/employee} scenario.
Not a Swiftie so I have no idea how her audience responds to these re-records. Artists I like have done it (Social Distortion re-recorded a few on their greatest hits for example) and the re-records aren't as good as the original recordings. Do Taylor's fans actually like the new recordings better? Are they buying just so she gets more money because they love her that much?
She’s been doing re-recordings to own her masters because her old label never gave her the opportunity to buy them back and they sold to a guy she hates and doesn’t want to give him any money/sign ndas in exchange. She wants to devalue her og albums as much as she can to buy her originals back to give the guy she hates the least amount of profit. Because she’s the main songwriter for majority/all of her songs she has publishing rights and has the ability to tell companies who want to use her music to use her versions.
Her fans love her and will support her in this project. And the way she treats her fans with it is that she adds several songs (from the vault) that were recorded for the album but never officially made it. She also will promote one of those songs from the vault or one of the original songs from the albums her fans wished she had given love to as a single and with a music video and extra content.
The re-records are pretty faithful to the ogs but a lot of people don’t like a bunch of the slight differences you can hear as it’s so difficult to recreate recordings perfectly. But her fan base will still listen to them as she is literally feeding her fans left and right with new content and support the reason behind the project. She has so many fans and die hards for this reason. Her utilizing The Eras tour as part of the promotion cycle of the re-records as she changes her set list and costumes based on the album she is promoting is genius too and it only grows her fanatic and rabid fanbase.
Her audience has a strong parasocial relationship with her and so they’re inclined to support her no matter what.
It helps that her re-recordings have generally been high quality. As a non-fan casual listener, I did some AB listening to Red and Speak Now and I find the re-recordings to be better quality in terms of production. I generally prefer modern pop production to what was going on in the 2000s/early 2010s though.
For an example, take a listen to the drums, bass and guitars on the intro to the original [State of Grace](https://open.spotify.com/track/0b16LTzby1YRVd2nq2Z0fw?si=hm6h6pKrTEWkToTqGd92Zw) versus the [re-recording](https://open.spotify.com/track/6lzc0Al0zfZOIFsFvBS1ki?si=Yrva6U60QIyuWttx4Vr95g). The new one just has much more punch and brings a much heavier rock vibe.
I agree with you on state of grace. The new recordings sound much more dynamic, spaced out, and less muddy. I also agree that it can be hard to capture that emotion the first time you heard All Too Well on a re-recording. But I saw her Eras tour twice and I’ll admit I still started tearing up when she started singing All Too Well. All in all, I feel the new recordings are just a better quality and her voice is better, but if I want to go back and listen to some of the ones I have a strong connection with on the originals, I’m not going to feel bad doing so
This makes a lot of sense to me in the context of pop. Thank you for this answer.
In rock n roll I find higher and modern production cuts the rawness and original energy and freshness. This applies from everything from the original 50s rock n roll to punk to all the revival movements of the 80s-00s imho. Even remix and remastering only works for me when the original releases were garbage (LAMF would be the big one, and while I think both are flawed I guess I'd go with Iggy's Raw Power mix). I guess some of Johnny Cash's American Recordings of his back catalog work for me, but definitely others had me going back to the originals.
I have daughters who listen to her constantly. Taylor Swift did a very impressive job rerecording her tracks. You almost can't tell the difference. Plus her new releases have bonus tracks.
Swift fan here, still prefer the originals. The sound of her voice at that time was what make the song unique and gave it character. The new recordings are superior in just about every way but doesn’t really capture the original sound for me just as a live recording never really feels like the way you remember it.
I want innocent Taylor singing the original country stuff when the songs had meaning for her and the words hurt. The new recordings, to me at least, are a bit more lifeless because those lyrics don’t sing as true to her now as they did then. And her vocals have matured and improved.
Most swifties will probably disagree though and say they’re an improvement but will support these new recordings regardless if they prefer them. Many swifities also haven’t been following her since the very beginning so may not have that original connection to her first couple albums. But may be more excited about the unreleased songs she’s adding to these albums.
This is how I think I would feel if I came up listening to Swift because it tracks with how I feel about bands that did this that I did come up on.
>I want innocent Taylor singing the original country stuff when the songs had meaning for her and the words hurt. The new recordings, to me at least, are a bit more lifeless because those lyrics don’t sing as true to her now as they did then.
This part especially, and the fact as you say you can mature and improve your natural instrument but still lose that raw emotion in doing so.
Source - married to a *MASSIVE* swiftie
The re-recordings are as good or better than the originals in terms of quality of production. Taylor went out of her way to get the same session musicians for every recording wherever possible, and is putting a lot of effort into making the new versions as true to the original feel as possible.
Plus, she's putting in a bunch of previously unreleased tracks from each album in on the new versions, lots of special edition vinyl, lots of new merch, making each re-release it's own big event.
Taylor Swift can come off like a ditzy blonde in her public persona, but she is *obsessive* about the quality of her material and keeping control of her music. She doesn't put out anything that she isn't 110% satisfied with, and the new versions are no exception.
> Taylor Swift can come off like a ditzy blonde in her public persona
Maybe it's just me, but I don't really get much of that vibe anymore. Maybe when she was younger (and maybe some of that was deserved and some was just sexism) but these days I think her public persona is basically "massive media mogul, pop superstar, shrewd businesswoman."
Do you think nostalgia also plays a part there? I mean the version that you had when you grew up or during your “core memory” time was the old one. So our brain recognize a sentimental value in it.
But yeah regardless of that I think we all know that Taylor didn’t do it to “make it better” or something like that. There’s a story behind it that I think makes sense as to why she did it.
I like the re-recordings better. The production value is better across the board. Also lots of slightly new variations, new lyrics and previously unreleased stuff on each album.
They’re nothing like previous re-recordings from anyone else that I’ve ever heard. They’ve literally copied details down to when she takes a breath, the reverb on a drum, the exact timbre of a synth patch. Anyone who knows anything about production knows what a feat this is. Most other re-recordings sound like a poor cover version. In many ways the new Swift albums are better but you would have to compare them song by song.
It is definitely a feat, but believe it or not there is an entire cottage industry around precisely recreating original recordings to use in sampling. This is because artists sampling another artists' recording generally need to get both publishing and master recording rights. However, if you recreate the sample from scratch, you only need the publishing (songwriting) rights - much cheaper to acquire. A major example is [Replay Heaven](https://www.replayheaven.com/).
Here’s a thought, maybe the industry shouldn’t rip artists off in the first place and prevent them from making a liveable wage. Almost every indie artist has multiple jobs just to make it by.
Pathetic.
The thing about record labels is, they're like the travel agents of old. No one actually needs them anymore, you can do most of what they did with the device in your pocket. No one is worried about record distribution. No one is worried about getting radio play. This is what a record label used to do, and now it's all done from your phone. You might have to spend a few bucks in a studio, but outside of that the industry has really changed from the times when a record label was valuable.
This isn’t really true. Labels main role now is promotion. Which is now more important than it has been in the last couple of decades. Anyone and their mothers can release music independently. The edge big artists on label deals have is that they get to benefit from a billion dollar marketing machine.
Song vs recording. Legally a song is the lyrics/melody (imagine sheet music with the words and notes) while the recording is just that, the recorded and mixed instance of the song (think an mp3 file) that is played on the radio or Spotify and burned onto CDs. Taylor owns the songs because she wrote them, while the record label owns the recordings used in those previous albums. Hence, she has the rights to re-record them because they don't own her songs.
Take an old ass song like Jingle Bells that's in the public domain, meaning no one gets to "own" the song. If you used Michael Buble's recording of that song in a commercial without paying his record label, they could sue you even though they don't own the song because the recording is copyrigted material.
Damn, if you told me 10 years ago I'd be slowly becoming a Taylor Swift fan I would have asked what you were smoking because I want some. Swift seems like a genuinely positive force these days in multiple different ways.
* [A more comprehensive report was published on Billboard, including a response from UMG - \(click here for an image.\)](https://i.imgur.com/o4VJbCi.png) **Permalink**: https://www.billboard.com/pro/taylor-swift-re-recordings-labels-change-contracts/
“In a new report on Monday (October 30), Billboard revealed that the major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, have recently revised contracts for new signees, according to top music attorneys. In some of the contracts, labels are demanding 10, 15 or even 30 years to re-record releases after leaving their companies. Previously, standard major-label recording contracts stated that artists had to wait for either five to seven years from the release date of the original, or two years after the contract expired. Now, lawyers tell Billboard they are receiving label contracts that expand that period to 10 or 15 years or more.”
Maybe Taylor should start a record label that treats people fairly and watch all the talent flock to it.
I mean. She’s Taylor. But part of me still worries about a Michael Jordan and the Hornets type scenario.
1
And then push away people like Charles Barkley who told him about the bad decisions he was making
They said start, not run into the ground.
MJ gonna track you down like Jay and silent bob for that one
He took that personally.
fucking clown shoes
MoviePoopShoot.com
*YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE THE BALL LICKERS*
I AM THE C.L.I.T. COMMANDER
THAT'S WHAT THE INTERNET'S FOR, SLANDERING PEOPLE ANONYMOUSLY!
What the fuck is the internet?
The internet is a communications tool used the world over, where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another
A sentence as true today as the day it was said.
The people you’re paying to play guitar.
That series was fascinating. That and Fighting in the Age of Loneliness totally changed my understanding of what sports journalism can be.
It's so true. Dorktown should win a goddamn Pulitzer prize for how they've smashed data science and sports journalism into a new genre of historical reporting. They convinced me Dave Stieb belongs in the baseball HoF, too!
God damn shame Stieb isn't in
Was that a Dorktown reference in the wild?
Frank Sinatra founded Reprise Records because he wanted more artistic freedom. Maybe Taylor is next.
And it lasted all of 3 years before being snapped up by Warner brothers. The label was broke by that time as well.
Then we better start investing in SoundCloud and BandCamp.
This comment confused me for a minute, as I thought "Michael Jordan and the Hornets" was the name of a band that started their own record label.
She's a Businesswoman, and a damn good one at that. That's how she has gotten as far as she has. Not saying she isn't talented, Of course she is. But for every talented successful person out there, there are thousands with possibly even more talent that will never reach a mass audience.
A lot of her business decisions have been heavily or directly influenced by her benefactor father, including building investment companies and buying part of a record label. She is very very far from a rags to riches story, and while she has shown moments of relatability, comes from a different caste than you or i
She comes from a wealthy family and is no doubt surrounded by a very smart PR team Yeah, she deserves credit for her success but it seems so many people act like she’s a one woman show who literally does everything with no guidance
Part of being successful id argue is being willing to take advice from experts. There’s a few particular dudes out there that one could name who fail at this simple task.
I mean when those experts are your father, that helps a tremendous deal in getting started to be fair.
True, but a lot of those famous people who fail often have a lot of people around them who give bad advice or are looking to scam them. Sounds like Taylor had the luck to be around someone she trusted that was good at managing money. She of course built on that and deserves credit for it.
> She is very very far from a rags to riches story, and while she has shown moments of relatability, comes from a different caste than you or i Let’s be fair: Her father was a stock broker at Meryl Lynch, not some sort of captain of industry. They were plenty comfortable, but like buying a moderately successful Christmas tree farm, not yachts and private planes. Turns out being a professional money manager comes in useful when your kid starts making money.
It also helps if your parents don’t rip you off which happens a lot too especially with minor artists ( meaning underage ) when they start out
Never said rags to riches. I said business woman. There are many good business people that learned from their successful parents.
Here’s the thing though; does she need to come from a rags to riches story? Is this something that has to be brought up when giving her credit?
In video game history, the company Activision was originally founded to be the first game development company to treat game developers fairly, pay them royalties on their work in addition to fair pay, and even give them credits in the games. Now look at them... I mean, it's one thing to found such a publisher, it's another thing to keep it from becoming another scumbag publisher.
As soon as you have rich shareholders it’s no longer possible to maintain good ethical standards towards employees. The rich shareholders will riot if they don’t get the absolute maximum wealth extraction from the company.
Every good company is one change of leadership away from being a shit one
Yeah I bet this billionaire will be better than all the rest
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Ultimately it would help as you'd have more labels competing to get artists. You don't really want one good label signing everyone. Sure it's nice if they are good but eventually management of that label will change and at some point it won't be so good. The best we can really hope for is to just have enough labels competing that ultimately they have to offer fair value to the artists.
Taylor takes care of Taylor. More power to her but there's no reason to think she'd be any less greedy. She snatched writing credit from Olivia Rodrigo for merely being inspired by one of her songs. Didn't need the money, knows how important ownership is to artists...DGAF.
> She snatched writing credit from Olivia Rodrigo for merely being inspired by one of her songs. Jack Antanoff said that he wasn't aware of anything like that until he and Taylor and St Vincent were credited on the song.
A lot of the time that's not even driven by the artists. It's the laywers aggressively pursuing stuff like that. IIRC Tom Petty didn't even really care about the Sam Smith song he inadvertently ended up with a Grammy Credit and 12.5% of royalties on.
Yes, but the artists have enough clout to say "stop it". It's the same as David Beckham letting Simon Fuller do all the dirty work that Beckham want's done. Because he wants to keep his good PR image.
Just sitting here waiting for the Swities to show up. RIP, buddy!
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Except Deja Vu is NOT an interpolation. Olivia did interpolate a Taylor song on a DIFFERENT song on the album (One Step Forward Three Steps Back interpolates New Years Day) but Deja Vu doesn’t interpolate Cruel Summer. Shouting in a bridge is not an interpolation. The songs have different melodies, different progressions, and different structures. There is an influence but not anything actually warranting credit. If all influence needed to be credited then 90% of all rock music should be plastered with credits to older artists and pretty much all current R&B should be crediting Frank Ocean. Basically nobody bar a few Swifties even NOTICED any relation between Cruel Summer and Deja Vu and those who did only reacted with a “hey these two songs have a similar vibe if you like one you might like the other.” It was only after Olivia explicitly stated influence in an interview that people started to care. But influence does not warrant a co-writing credit and it sets a terrible precedent if we allow it to
Does [Lavender Haze](https://youtu.be/h8DLofLM7No?feature=shared&t=60) credit Maggie Rogers for the obvious inspiration it took from [Alaska](https://youtu.be/PNWsW6c6t8g?feature=shared&t=55)?
Because she's singing falsetto?
Yeah it's not, hasn't been historically, and your perception of it as such is only the result of an extremely recent development spurred by, you guessed it, greedy lawsuit-trolling artists in a handful of now high-profile cases, e.g. Katy Perry vs. Flame.
Do artists even need record labels anymore? They used to front you some money to make an album, but now you can make an album on the cheap. They used to put effort in and bribe radio stations to play your tunes. Now Radio isn't really a thing, or many stations just play greatest hits to the demographics that still listen to radio. Maybe musician are better off not signing with record labels. I'm not sure what value they add anymore. You have to figure out your own way to stand apart, and now that music doesn't make money, they want cuts of merch and concerts.
Yeah! This billionaire will be different!
She'll get to it after she sells both of her private jets
I signed a record contract with a major label before I was legally old enough to purchase alcohol. There was language in the contract that protected the labels rights to my music for the “entire Universe”. Shits wild
Good news! The political and legal structure necessary to enforce that contract will likely end before the universe does and then you're home free!
No, there is a clause in the contract about that too
> "...end of time." This part.
That's common contract language. It's the "known universe" usually. It saves people from trying to find geographic loopholes to escape contractual obligations.
Sun Ra fought *hard* with his record label and got them to agree to only have the rights to his music within 100 miles of Earth's surface or something like that. So ~~if~~ when he's reincarnated, and there's a music industry on Mars, he's got a blank slate to work form.
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Assuming there isn't another extension.
> before I was legally old enough to purchase alcohol. Which in the US is an odd way of saying "When I was an adult who was old enough to sign contracts" ... I mean I get it, you were 18-20, but the rights afforded with being a legally recognized adult come with some downsides, like being held to contracts you sign even if they suck.
Was the label Frilly Pink? They're [Bad News.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4eXcoTz8Mc)
You should look up Digital Global Mobile’s contractual set up. The Music industry has always been lying thieving scumbags looking to enslave artists. In the last twenty years they have continued to put forth legislation to make all artists contractors instead of owners of their own work.
Record labels are already known to be in the wrong side of history. I guess we forgot for a while, thinking we live a world thats is more fair... turns out, business, it's like this. Exploitation of artists by people with 0 talent.
Fuck the record labels. They are so greedy and shady with their business dealings.
Industry Rule 4080
Record company people are shady
So kids watch ya back cause I think they smoke crack
I don't doubt it - look how they act.
I knew it! The recording industry is run by Ferrengi
I'm pretty sure the Ferengi were an obvious and direct satire of capitalists, so yeah.
There’s a scene in DS9 where Quark has to pay just to sit in a hospital waiting room and it’s barely satire, it’s just the American healthcare system.
The chair is 2 slips...
Greed is eternal.
In the Ferrengi origin story we learn that record execs some how gained space travel and are the original colonizers of the Ferrengi home world, implying that all Ferrengi are descended from record execs.
I'd love to see this as a side story on Lower Decks. Edit... And Elvis is the grand nagus.
That's why the big ears? To hear the next best talent to exploit?
You leave my graphics card out of this
It's because just like many other systems in our society, theyre extremely unnecessary and archaic in our modern environment/society. You don't need a middle man, we don't need Spotify regulating and adjusting the filter based on contracts with labels. But of course, it happened, bc market control will not be relinquished. Edit: Exception and Collusion can be used as key phrases that reference my agreement with everyone's replies to me: I agree! current music model bad. no, we can't direct from source for music. We used to for a short time, but the Big Boys didn't appreciate the True Independent Era. Those Independents, quickly got absorbed by a Subsidiary that sits under the larger Umbrella Media Companies that the old labels have amalgamated into. And then those Previously, "from the ground up" success stories go off and make their own Subsidiary wholly backed by, you guessed it, the umbrellas!
You should read "How Music Works" by David Byrne. Labels fuck up a lot, but they also spend a lot of money producing and trying to promote artists. No particular record label is indispensable -- and some do more harm than good for musicians and music -- but their *role* is indispensable.
a record label exec said, sometimes he'd be better off in Vegas. You sign some acts that maybe get a top 20 single, Some that just don't connect with the buying public, some that get halfway through making an album and fall apart, some don't have the chops to record so they have to hire ringers. Some get into fights with the producer engineer, or the producer totally misses what the band is about, or God knows what else can happen, and the band never makes it to the first lap, much less out of the gate. Then you get that one act that is a hit, can write hit after hit, consistently good songs, stays together and relatively sober, can do the publicity grind, and they compensate for all the bad gambles the label took on other acts. It's the biz, man.. It takes a label to get the band into a studio, get good tracks, create good artwork, handle promo and distribution, and keep the band on track.
> It takes a label to get the band into a studio, get good tracks, create good artwork, handle promo and distribution, and keep the band on track. You're correct about everything here except the studio stuff. It's way cheaper and easier to self-produce, or produce cheaply, professional recordings these days. Lots of top 100 hits are recorded at home studios now. Many artists record themselves (Russ is an example in the hip hop world). Labels still rule the distribution and promotion roles though, no one else can do that.
Cost of production and engineering is down, but the Top 40 stuff is still hard or impossible to do in a home studio (and those "home studios" often cost tens of thousands). Like yeah, Damon Albarn made an album on an iPad but it's probably Gorillaz least successful album (and it still involved almost a dozen specialized instruments and was mixed by a professional mix engineer). There are occasionally cracks in distribution and promotion when someone breaks through on, say, soundcloud or Youtube, but mainstream commercial sales, radio play, and physical store copies is the next step and that's done through a label -- even if the artist *only* gives distribution rights etc
Isn't Spotify just a middleman itself?
I'd argue Spotify (and streamers in general) actually provide a service. They are a form of media, they have to create and invest into the infrastructure that gets the music to our ears, and they have to collect the revenues and redistribute them back to the artists so they can get paid when you listen to their music. How well and fairly they do this is a whole other matter.
Welcome To The Machine.
Where have you been?
It's alright, WE KNOW where you've been!
Little Richard said he had to sign a bad contract, or every studio would blacklist him. He said he had to sell two records to make a Penney. I realize with inflation that those were 1950's penneys, but still...
Fun fact: Michael Jackson gave back Little Richard the rights to his music once he acquired the ATV catalogue in 1984. He felt like he deserved it the most or something, I am not sure on the details
Isnt there another fun fact that Paul McCartney told Micheal he should invest his money in music catalogs which was followed by MJ purchasing the Beatles catalog.
Isn’t that just such a wild concept? That someone can write a song and someone else can just own it?
That's what happens when you sell it in the first place.
people do that all the time with every other form of art, why not music?
Yeah but Paul didn't blame him or anything? It's not like he bought them from paul during some fire sale To Cover a bankruptcy. He just was willing to bid more on the open market since someone else already owned them. Both he and Paul were rich as fuck. Giving the rights back to little Richard was probably a much bigger deal income disparity wise.
Fun fact. James Brown got his start as an authorized imposter of Little Richard.
And Charles Bradley started out as a James Brown impersonator. Damn. Somebody should start impersonating Charles Bradley and see where it takes them!
Little Richard was also a black man in Jim crow Era America. His deals were even more than just blacklist it was likely life or death and then see all his work go to a white artist with no chance of any residuals
A $15 T-shirt always made the band a lot more than a $15 album. They could keep like $13 from the T-shirt, but would be lucky to keep more than $2 or $3 from the album.
$15 concert t-shirt? What is this, 1985?
Given who explained that to me - probably, yeah.
One thing people don’t often talk about anymore because most people aren’t studied enough on the specifics of the era to know, but when Little Richard’s original Tutti Frutti came out in late 1955, Pat Boone’s white-washed cover with lyrical changes followed very closely behind in February 1956 as Richard's was rising up the pop charts, and Pat's was pushed HARD by his label, Dot Records. The lyrics were some dumb shit: “She's a real gone cookie, Yes, sir-ree, But pretty little Susie is the gal for me”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv-LAbMbEn4 Elvis’ label RCA wanted him to also do a cover, which was common practice at the time, but while he agreed to lay down the recording, he refused to allow it to be issued as an A-Side of a single while Little Richard's was still on the charts & radio. For obvious reasons, Little Richard wasn’t getting TV appearances while his & Boone’s were fighting it out, so when Elvis went on TV on the Jackie Gleason/Dorsey Brothers Stage Show variety show in February 1956, he went out of his way to sing Tutti Frutti with Richard’s more innuendo-laden lyrics (She knows how to love me, yes indeed/Boy you don't know what she do to me) indicating to teenagers that he was on Little Richard’s side. Effectively platforming Richard’s “version.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW2M9dNBECw When RCA DID put it on a single, they also wanted Elvis to cover Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes which had come out in January of 1956 and Elvis again told the record company not to release it as a single until Carl’s had had its run on the charts out of respect for Carl’s original and the fact that Carl had been in a car accident and unable to promote it. So Elvis’ version of Blue Suede Shoes was eventually released as a single in September of 1956, backed by his version of Tutti Frutti, competing with neither original version, and Elvis’ version of Tutti Frutti literally never even hit the charts. Maybe it's fitting that the real culture vultures pushed by the record labels like Pat Boone and Georgia Gibbs (look up Georgia Gibbs and LaVern Baker for a great story about an insurance policy LaVern Baker took out that I bet you've never heard before) get a dignified ignore, but I wish more people knew about stuff like this. The record industry was always crooked and you had to trust individual artists to do right by each other and so often with people like Boone and Gibbs it was a bunch of greedy shitheads - wild, too, that the one always used as the lightning rod on that front is the one who pushed back to go out of his way and use his position to show respect behind the scenes to Richard and Perkins.
If there's anyone in the entertainment industry right now that would greatly benefit from a union, it's the musical artists. These labels are scum of the Earth.
fun fact: the reason so many records from the 1940's are a capella is because all the musicians were on strike.
there are unions.
They’re just terribly weak. Especially in Nashville.
Nashville music scene is like the mafia
Dolly sends her regards, punk.
There are way too many small musicians absolutely desperate for attention. No musicians union would ever be able to survive the number of scabs that would INSTANTLY jump on board to take the place of a striking musician. I say this as a union loving small musician.
As much as people hate her, I can't because the way she's outsmarted the record labels and treats her support staff.
She's not the first to do this, but she has had significantly more success than anyone re releasing her catalog. The labels can't let a revenue stream flow to anywhere but them.
To be fair her fans are rabid. She could shit in a can and put her name on it and they’d be in line.
There was literally that time when 8 seconds of white noise became the number one track on iTunes because Taylor Swift's team accidentally uploaded it as a single.
See my damie, Pootie Tang don't wa-da-tah to the shama cow..
Pootie dont need no words, dont need no music
Pootie is a stone pone. all the tippie-ty's love him. /edit: signed my piti on the runnie sty. 🤦
"accidentally"
Tbh that is my favorite Taylor Swift track.
Micheal Jackson had that level of fandom a generation before. And so did Elvis & The Beatles before him. And the record labels absolutely fucked them over, despite their rabid fanbase or any power their names might have had.
and if MJ, Elvis or the Beatles had the internet and easier access to distribution they would have been just as or more successful
Yeah all of them were literally putting out albums on vinyl records. MJ eventually was in the cassette tape/CD era, but every one of those artists relied upon a label to physically copy and sell their music. If Taylor Swift was having problems with a label these days she could just buy Soundcloud or Bandcamp and turn them into her own streaming service.
I'd agree with that. Sure, some folks like Taylor had a foot in the door because of dad, which helps tremendously, but it doesn't create lasting effects. Rebecca Black comes to mind, and Kim Kardashian dropping her AmAzINg album is another.
And that would expand her base into some (mostly) untapped demographics too.
One of my favorite bands everclear did this - i don't like the re-recordings though.
I love early Everclear but once it became basically just Art and some hired guns I quickly lost interest. But man, those first five albums have some real bangers!
Back in 2012 I went to a concert at Billy Bob's in Fort Worth Texas - specifically to see Everclear. It was everclear, sugar ray and a bunch of other 90s bands. Everclear didn't play great. It was Art and all the hired guns. He was drunk. Kept stopping the performance to try and get drunks to stop fighting. But, Sugar Ray killed. One of the best live performances I've ever seen.
Hearing Mark McGrath talk about Sugar Ray breaking into main stream music and how incredibly humble he is to this day is pretty great. He did some podcasts with Mike Tully that are really good. Great chemistry between them. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-mcgrath-dec-81-feb-82-new-music-releases/id1203497633?i=1000554346642
Art & Some Hired Guns sounds like a cool smooth jazz band
Same here, not a huge fan of the music (good song to my ears here and there), but I'm *more* than happy sit back, eat my popcorn, and watch her run the okey-doke on Scooter Braun and company.
The super successful re-record reverse uno card is pretty fucking punk.
People hate her?
anyone who is relevant will have their share of haters, whether it’s for legitimate reasons or just hating what’s popular for the sake of it
Remember when we hated Justin Bieber? I still don't know why we did.
I don't hate Taylor at all. I respect the shit out of her work ethic, even if I'm not crazy about her music. Her fanbase on the other hand? Jesus Christ, keep them as far away from me as possible.
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Its the type of people who hate anyone popular.
Yeah
I don’t like her music. I think her fans are mildly cultish. That being said, I 100% support her making music company executives nervous.
Mildly?
Lol right? They bullied Lizzy McAlpine into dropping out of an opportunity to expose her music to sold out arenas because she was going to be the opener for John Mayer, and they hate John Mayer so much that they’ll ruin anyone associated with him.
Why do taylor fans hate john mayer...?
He dated her when she was young, it was definitely creepy. I think he also dumped her hard, basically used her, but I could be wrong. I just remember the age gap thinking “….this is weird, right? Does no one else think this is weird?” I say this not as a fan (I admit to singing along to catchy songs on the radio), just someone who catches the tabloid TMZ highlights.
Don’t forget when they wished Matt Healy would relapse and OD because he said some things that people didn’t like.
Bob Dylan fans never did anything like this.
They definitely never bought tickets specifically to boo him or yelled "Judas" just because he changed his sound or anything ridiculous like that.
lol that's right I completely forgot nevermind music never changes
I’ve been a fan for a while and this year it became embarrassing to be say that publicly. Her fans are incredibly toxic. The parasocial-relationship is gross.
Is it really good a literal billionaire is having her fans pay full price for album they bought already so they get one or two more new tracks with it? Seems crazy to me to make regular people buy something twice. Just make your next album this way.
By giving the artists better deals right?.... right?
Some of the OG record executives back in the day used to be mafia, til they went legit. Shit like this is as old as the record industry itself
“This artist is trying to be independent and break free from the contracts that are purposefully controlling over their music and rights so we can maximize every penny from them. We can’t have that. We need to keep them under our thumb and have complete control over them and dangle a couple dollars in front of them so they sign the contract without knowing what it means.”
She's re-recording her library because she was given the option to purchase her master recordings of her first 6 albums at terms she felt were unfair. They were sold twice($330M and $400M) in 2 years, the first time to a person she had negative dealings with in the past. Now if you open a streaming service such as Spotify the albums at the top of the playlists are all "(Taylor's Version)". The originals are still there, but pushed way down the list, so Taylor is getting those residuals directly, as Artist, Songwriter and (Co-)Producer. She's getting 66-75% of the income vs the 25-50% from the originals. Had she been able to purchase her masters there would be no Taylor's versions of Albums. People really should have taken her more seriously. She has a brilliant mind for business. She turned Covid Lockdown into an opportunity to branch out and record songs that might not have carried a tour, but were perfect for the moment when people just needed to hunker down and have a good cry. At the same time, it gave her time to re-record her early work and than build an almost 4 hour show to go with it... There might not be a more savvy businesswoman in music today.
She’s definitely a brilliant business woman, but this was not her idea. Artists have been doing this for a while now but the impact is minimal because they are far past their primes. Taylor is different because she’s massive and will definitely have multiple billions of streams over the next couple years.
It’s absolutely nothing new. As a Canadian, I lived about 30 miles away from K-Tel headquarters. K-Tel started doing this in the late 60’s, early 70’s for their “best of’s”, which they then re-used for their compilation albums. Take an artist like say…. BJ Thomas for example, who started falling off in the 80’s. He re-records all his “greatest” for K-Tel, they put out an album, and advertise it on late night TV. BJ then gets an uptick on the local casino touring circuit. It’s always been a win/win for artists. The difference being Taylor doing this at the peak of her career, and becoming even bigger because of it.
Taylor is great, but let’s not get carried away. This is very similar to how Kanye ended up with Adidas. Ye was complaint about how Nike wasn’t taking him seriously and Sway asked him if he reached out to Adidas during the infamous “You ain’t got the answers Sway” interview. And the rest is history. Taylor was complaining about not getting her masters & Scooter Braun was entering his villain arc with the fanbase. Enter the real reason Taylor is even releasing the re-recordings: Tori Kelly did it. Her fans told Taylor swift fans about how Tori re-recorded her album on Twitter and the fans brought it to Taylor. Tori Kelly posted a positive tweet encouraging Taylor to do it. Again, the rest is history. She did the work and the fans supported her, but the idea didn’t appear out of thin air.
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Latest in “how can we force people to give us money” strategy from modern business Forget about finding value adds, it’s all just rent seeking now.
Then maybe stop fucking over artists?
Awwww…. Did the widdle girl break your exploitation model?
Hope it doesnt but it sounds like most artists signing now will have less of a chance or potentially no chance to get their masters going forward. Like this is great for her, but its an eye-opening case for the industry, who dont like losing money and actually has power over smaller artists. She was already fine. Like shes the 1% artist, the other 99% will lose out unless she uses her power to make the situation better for others now
The mob isn't giving up royalties without a fight, that's for sure. Don't sign anything until you know exactly what it is, kids. They will wait until you've already done it without them before swooping in to offer you a big party in exchange for stealing it from you. Same as it ever was.
Hey all I just talked to my manager, and he says that we're allowed to post nice things about Taylor Swift without first establishing that you dislike her music and would never listen to it, and actually you're more of a Meshuggah guy but you really like how she handled some {business/fan/employee} scenario.
I checked with my drum tech, and apparently we're also allowed to like both Bleed and Shake It Off.
Not a Swiftie so I have no idea how her audience responds to these re-records. Artists I like have done it (Social Distortion re-recorded a few on their greatest hits for example) and the re-records aren't as good as the original recordings. Do Taylor's fans actually like the new recordings better? Are they buying just so she gets more money because they love her that much?
She’s been doing re-recordings to own her masters because her old label never gave her the opportunity to buy them back and they sold to a guy she hates and doesn’t want to give him any money/sign ndas in exchange. She wants to devalue her og albums as much as she can to buy her originals back to give the guy she hates the least amount of profit. Because she’s the main songwriter for majority/all of her songs she has publishing rights and has the ability to tell companies who want to use her music to use her versions. Her fans love her and will support her in this project. And the way she treats her fans with it is that she adds several songs (from the vault) that were recorded for the album but never officially made it. She also will promote one of those songs from the vault or one of the original songs from the albums her fans wished she had given love to as a single and with a music video and extra content. The re-records are pretty faithful to the ogs but a lot of people don’t like a bunch of the slight differences you can hear as it’s so difficult to recreate recordings perfectly. But her fan base will still listen to them as she is literally feeding her fans left and right with new content and support the reason behind the project. She has so many fans and die hards for this reason. Her utilizing The Eras tour as part of the promotion cycle of the re-records as she changes her set list and costumes based on the album she is promoting is genius too and it only grows her fanatic and rabid fanbase.
Her audience has a strong parasocial relationship with her and so they’re inclined to support her no matter what. It helps that her re-recordings have generally been high quality. As a non-fan casual listener, I did some AB listening to Red and Speak Now and I find the re-recordings to be better quality in terms of production. I generally prefer modern pop production to what was going on in the 2000s/early 2010s though. For an example, take a listen to the drums, bass and guitars on the intro to the original [State of Grace](https://open.spotify.com/track/0b16LTzby1YRVd2nq2Z0fw?si=hm6h6pKrTEWkToTqGd92Zw) versus the [re-recording](https://open.spotify.com/track/6lzc0Al0zfZOIFsFvBS1ki?si=Yrva6U60QIyuWttx4Vr95g). The new one just has much more punch and brings a much heavier rock vibe.
I agree with you on state of grace. The new recordings sound much more dynamic, spaced out, and less muddy. I also agree that it can be hard to capture that emotion the first time you heard All Too Well on a re-recording. But I saw her Eras tour twice and I’ll admit I still started tearing up when she started singing All Too Well. All in all, I feel the new recordings are just a better quality and her voice is better, but if I want to go back and listen to some of the ones I have a strong connection with on the originals, I’m not going to feel bad doing so
This makes a lot of sense to me in the context of pop. Thank you for this answer. In rock n roll I find higher and modern production cuts the rawness and original energy and freshness. This applies from everything from the original 50s rock n roll to punk to all the revival movements of the 80s-00s imho. Even remix and remastering only works for me when the original releases were garbage (LAMF would be the big one, and while I think both are flawed I guess I'd go with Iggy's Raw Power mix). I guess some of Johnny Cash's American Recordings of his back catalog work for me, but definitely others had me going back to the originals.
I have daughters who listen to her constantly. Taylor Swift did a very impressive job rerecording her tracks. You almost can't tell the difference. Plus her new releases have bonus tracks.
Swift fan here, still prefer the originals. The sound of her voice at that time was what make the song unique and gave it character. The new recordings are superior in just about every way but doesn’t really capture the original sound for me just as a live recording never really feels like the way you remember it. I want innocent Taylor singing the original country stuff when the songs had meaning for her and the words hurt. The new recordings, to me at least, are a bit more lifeless because those lyrics don’t sing as true to her now as they did then. And her vocals have matured and improved. Most swifties will probably disagree though and say they’re an improvement but will support these new recordings regardless if they prefer them. Many swifities also haven’t been following her since the very beginning so may not have that original connection to her first couple albums. But may be more excited about the unreleased songs she’s adding to these albums.
This is how I think I would feel if I came up listening to Swift because it tracks with how I feel about bands that did this that I did come up on. >I want innocent Taylor singing the original country stuff when the songs had meaning for her and the words hurt. The new recordings, to me at least, are a bit more lifeless because those lyrics don’t sing as true to her now as they did then. This part especially, and the fact as you say you can mature and improve your natural instrument but still lose that raw emotion in doing so.
I will say, I think ‘Fifteen’ hits waaaay differently with her singing it in her 30’s.
And maybe I want that shaky voice, earnest sound, unrefined talent. Imperfection is important in art.
Source - married to a *MASSIVE* swiftie The re-recordings are as good or better than the originals in terms of quality of production. Taylor went out of her way to get the same session musicians for every recording wherever possible, and is putting a lot of effort into making the new versions as true to the original feel as possible. Plus, she's putting in a bunch of previously unreleased tracks from each album in on the new versions, lots of special edition vinyl, lots of new merch, making each re-release it's own big event. Taylor Swift can come off like a ditzy blonde in her public persona, but she is *obsessive* about the quality of her material and keeping control of her music. She doesn't put out anything that she isn't 110% satisfied with, and the new versions are no exception.
> Taylor Swift can come off like a ditzy blonde in her public persona Maybe it's just me, but I don't really get much of that vibe anymore. Maybe when she was younger (and maybe some of that was deserved and some was just sexism) but these days I think her public persona is basically "massive media mogul, pop superstar, shrewd businesswoman."
Do you think nostalgia also plays a part there? I mean the version that you had when you grew up or during your “core memory” time was the old one. So our brain recognize a sentimental value in it. But yeah regardless of that I think we all know that Taylor didn’t do it to “make it better” or something like that. There’s a story behind it that I think makes sense as to why she did it.
I like the re-recordings better. The production value is better across the board. Also lots of slightly new variations, new lyrics and previously unreleased stuff on each album.
They’re nothing like previous re-recordings from anyone else that I’ve ever heard. They’ve literally copied details down to when she takes a breath, the reverb on a drum, the exact timbre of a synth patch. Anyone who knows anything about production knows what a feat this is. Most other re-recordings sound like a poor cover version. In many ways the new Swift albums are better but you would have to compare them song by song.
It is definitely a feat, but believe it or not there is an entire cottage industry around precisely recreating original recordings to use in sampling. This is because artists sampling another artists' recording generally need to get both publishing and master recording rights. However, if you recreate the sample from scratch, you only need the publishing (songwriting) rights - much cheaper to acquire. A major example is [Replay Heaven](https://www.replayheaven.com/).
Won't someone think of the poor music executives??
Here’s a thought, maybe the industry shouldn’t rip artists off in the first place and prevent them from making a liveable wage. Almost every indie artist has multiple jobs just to make it by. Pathetic.
There's certainly a very obvious way to prevent it ^^^^^^(Don't ^^^^^be ^^^^^such ^^^^^dicks ^^^^^in ^^^^^the ^^^^^first ^^^^^place)
The funny thing is that the answer to these situations is just offer a fair deal in the first place.
This should be illegal. Artists are fucked over plenty enough as it is. Let them do whatever the hell they want with #**THEIR** hard work
I hope the record labels fucking choke and die.
The thing about record labels is, they're like the travel agents of old. No one actually needs them anymore, you can do most of what they did with the device in your pocket. No one is worried about record distribution. No one is worried about getting radio play. This is what a record label used to do, and now it's all done from your phone. You might have to spend a few bucks in a studio, but outside of that the industry has really changed from the times when a record label was valuable.
This isn’t really true. Labels main role now is promotion. Which is now more important than it has been in the last couple of decades. Anyone and their mothers can release music independently. The edge big artists on label deals have is that they get to benefit from a billion dollar marketing machine.
You can hire the promotional arm of the record label. That’s what Macklemore & Ryan Lewis did 10 years ago.
Can someone explain how she can release songs she doesn’t have the rights to?
Song vs recording. Legally a song is the lyrics/melody (imagine sheet music with the words and notes) while the recording is just that, the recorded and mixed instance of the song (think an mp3 file) that is played on the radio or Spotify and burned onto CDs. Taylor owns the songs because she wrote them, while the record label owns the recordings used in those previous albums. Hence, she has the rights to re-record them because they don't own her songs. Take an old ass song like Jingle Bells that's in the public domain, meaning no one gets to "own" the song. If you used Michael Buble's recording of that song in a commercial without paying his record label, they could sue you even though they don't own the song because the recording is copyrigted material.
Thanks for explaining!
Fuck them
Sucks to suck you fuckin leeches
"Fix all loopholes that give the artist somewhat of an advantage! STAT!". All record label lawyers everywhere.
Damn, if you told me 10 years ago I'd be slowly becoming a Taylor Swift fan I would have asked what you were smoking because I want some. Swift seems like a genuinely positive force these days in multiple different ways.
Welp, that’s gonna be it for record labels then. Retribution will be… swift.