Taylor Swift has repeatedly proven to be a negotiation mastermind, as when she took her music off streaming sites in 2014 to prompt them to increase their royalty rates, or bypassed movie studios in 2023 to bring her Eras Tour concert film to big screens. But for years, Swift was continually stymied by her biggest negotiation goal: securing ownership of the master recordings of her first six albums.
“The Magic’s Not Here No More”
At age 15, up-and-coming Swift signed with Nashville-based record label Big Machine Label Group (BMLG), owned by Scott Borchetta, in 2005, and went on to release six albums with the label. In 2018 contract renegotiations, Swift asked BMLG for ownership of her master recordings, which would give her control over royalty distribution. According to Swift, BMLG offered her only the right to “earn” her albums back, one for every new album she produced.
Swift refused and instead signed with Republic Records, which guaranteed her full ownership of her new music. “I walked away [from BMLG] because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future,” Swift wrote in an online post. “I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past.”
“Break Me Like a Promise”
Indeed, BMLG—and Swift’s back catalog—was quickly bought by music manager Scooter Braun’s company Ithaca Holdings. Swift called the sale her “worst-case scenario”: She accused Braun, along with his clients Kanye West and Justin Bieber, of bullying her in the past on social media.
Swift tried to purchase her masters from Braun, but she accused him of bad-faith negotiations. He sold Swift’s catalog in late 2020 to investment firm Shamrock Holdings. Shamrock reportedly offered to sell Swift her masters, but with a string attached that Swift called a “non-starter”: Braun would continue to have a financial stake in her work.
“Somethin’ ’Bout It Felt Like Home”
Beginning in 2021, on the suggestion of singer Kelly Clarkson, Swift embarked on an ingenious way of “taking back what’s mine,” as she put it: She began rerecording her first six albums, note for note, and releasing them with new art, incentives, and previously unheard “vault tracks.” The goal? To render her original recordings irrelevant and “at least partially ensure that profits from the streams, sales, and licensing of her songs will go into her pockets, not Braun’s,” according to Parade.
Between 2021 and 2023, Swift released relatively faithful rerecordings of albums Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989. With their trademark enthusiasm and loyalty, Swifties snapped up these so-called Taylor’s Versions and shunned the original recordings. The rereleases had the intended effect of dramatically diminishing the originals’ financial value to Braun and Shamrock, according to Billboard. “With the help of fans, [Swift] devalued her old music—shorted her own stock—then bought it at a discount,” sums up Tyler Foggatt in the New Yorker.
“This Thing Was a Masterpiece”
In early 2023, Swift embarked on her wildly popular Eras Tour, a 3.5-hour concert odyssey that spanned her catalog and the globe. With $2 billion in ticket sales, it was the highest-grossing tour of all time—and made Swift a billionaire.
Swift’s fans eagerly speculated about when she would drop her final two album rerecordings, Taylor Swift and Reputation. Instead, on May 30, 2025, she announced she had regained ownership of the master recordings of her first six albums. Shamrock reportedly sold them to her, along with related assets, for a reported $360 million—about what it paid for them in 2021, according to Billboard.
In a message on her website, Swift described herself as “Elated and amazed,” writing, “To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.” She credited her fans’ “passionate support” for enabling her to close the deal.
“I Kept You Like an Oath”
Here are three takeaways from Swift’s pursuit of her negotiation goal:
1. “Time won’t fly”: Play the long game. “People often greatly underestimate how much I will inconvenience myself to prove a point,” Swift said in 2022. Her decision to rerecord her early albums was certainly an inconvenience—but a shrewd and ultimately rewarding one.
Patience, fortitude, and tenacity may be needed to meet ambitious goals. Take inspiration from Swift, and never give up.
2. “You double-cross my mind”: Undercut their BATNA. “To Taylor, the re-records started as a strategic lever that put the hostage holders of her music under the heel of her sparkly stiletto,” writes Sarah Chapelle in her Swift newsletter, Liner Notes. “With each release cutting into profits, her point became more clear and costly.”
In negotiation terms, with each rerecording, Swift worsened her opponents’ BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. In the process, she accumulated riches that put the cost of buying back her masters within reach. Some of Swift’s fans joked that, with their ticket and album purchases, they had unwittingly contributed to an elaborate GoFundMe campaign.
Many negotiators recognize the value of improving their own BATNA but overlook the possibility of worsening their counterpart’s BATNA—a strategy that can be just as valuable. Notably, these are often “away from the table” moves carried out before a negotiation gets underway.
3. “It was rare, I was there”: Enlist your allies. The rerecordings were not just a “zero sum game” or a waste of time, according to Chapelle. For both the artist and her supporters, the re-releases became “emotionally tethered” to the Eras Tour in a way that was “transformative and healing and valuable”—as anyone who belted out the 10-minute Taylor’s Version of her song “All Too Well” in a stadium experienced.
Moreover, “Taylor’s battle was always much bigger than her,” writes Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. “She’s taking on the whole issue of artists controlling their own work”—a negotiation goal that artists as big as Prince and Paul McCartney struggled to meet.
While some labels are now making it more difficult for artists to rerecord their work, Swift says new artists are telling her they’ve negotiated ownership of their masters “because of this fight.” Other musicians are reclaiming older work through rerecordings. That’s a real legacy to leave.
What other lessons do you see in Taylor Swift’s pursuit of her negotiation goals?
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