Taylor swift manager is selling her “masters” ,what is a masters?
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They used to call it the “master tape” (back when they used tapes) but it’s the actual finished recording that CDs/records/downloads/streams are copies of. (When they “remaster” something it means they made a new master from the raw files/tapes/tracks so that it sounds better).
As you might guess, the master of a popular record is quite valuable, because whoever owns it has the right to sell records of it or license it to commercials/movies. Taylor Swift doesn’t own her old masters, so there’s a significant amount of royalty money she’s missing out on when her old records are sold or streamed. So, she’s making new recordings and asking people to buy those instead.
This has happened before. Off the top of my head, two Canadian punk bands (Chixdiggit and Subhumans) both recorded new versions of their first albums because they either couldn’t afford to buy/license the masters from whoever owned them to make reissues with or the owner refused for some reason.
Song ownership is broken into two parts. Usually artists only own 1 of the 2 parts
Part 1: The music and lyrics – The artist owns the melody and lyrics to the song, they wrote it, its theirs, they can sing it, or whatever.
Part 2: The actual recording – you know the actual song you hear on the radio (or wherever) that single recording thats on the album? That is the “master” its the actual recording of part 1. Usually this is owned by the music label–NOT the artist. Think of this as beings something “physical”. Its literally the actual recording of the song that went on the album
On the current situation:
Taylor Swift owns part 1, her previous label owns part 2. This is pretty common in music. The owner of part 2 sold her “masters” to someone else. This is 100% legitimate and normal, music ownership gets bought and sold regularly. There’s some quirks to her specific situation, but we’ll ignore that for now, and frankly, they aren’t that important.
What can she do:
The artist, since they own part 1, can, in an somewhat ironic way, re-record the song themselves and create new masters (they could also buy the old masters). Taylor Swift is allegedly re-recording, at her own expense, ALL of her old music she does not own the masters to. This is wildly unusual to do on such a large scale (over 60 songs) and will be costly, and will Not be identical to her original recordings, but she’ll own these new recordings.
He isn’t, nor has he ever been her manager. He is a businessman who bought a company she recorded music for.
When you record music for a recording company, they own that version of the music, those recordings are what are referred to as Masters. When money is paid for those recordings (album sales, streaming revenue, radio play or licensed for commercial use), the money goes to the company, who then pay royalty to the artist, and anyone else contracted to receive payment (such as the writer).
In Taylor Swift’s case, she is credited as a writer on almost all of her songs. This gives her rights on where her songs can be sold (so she can veto if the company wants to let it appear in a movie or advert).
The masters have been sold by Braun, who bought out her old music label, to an investment company, who presumably had hoped to work with Taylor.
She has instead said she intends to re-record and re-release her original six albums (the only 6 she doesn’t own the masters of herself), because she had previously been prevented from doing so by contract, but that requirement has now (or will soon) lapse.
They are like the bricks, beams and concrete before you build a house.
You can build almost anything with them. But once you’ve built it, you can’t unbuild it and build something else.
They’re the recordings from the individual instruments and the vocal recording before they’re mixed into the final track.
They’re the studio recordings of the individual instruments and vocal tracks all separate before the final mix in to the released track.
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