“I know, I know. What about Rep TV?” Taylor Swift writes in a letter posted to her site on May 30. The question has rippled across the internet for years, ever since she began her Taylor’s Version re-recordings when she lost the rights to the masters of her first six albums in 2019. Reputation, her angriest and perhaps most divisive album, was begging for a rerelease, but her acknowledgement of Rep (TV) was dwarfed by much more significant news. Taylor Swift bought back her masters. All of her music — at last — belongs to her.
“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it,” Swift says in the note. She expresses her utmost gratitude to Shamrock Capital, the investment firm Scooter Braun sold the masters to in 2020, for being “honest, fair, and respectful” in its interactions and for it recognizing that this was beyond a business deal to her. Speculation in “Page Six” last week suggested that the price of her masters might cost Swift anywhere from a third to half of her net worth. Sources told Billboard the amount is around $360 million, “relatively close” to what Shamrock paid. It’s clear now that to Swift the value of the masters were, ultimately, priceless. “My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead,” she jokes.
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
But what will happen to Reputation (Taylor’s Version) and Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version), the two remaining albums in her rerecording project? Well, good news and bad news. The rerecordings of Taylor Swift are complete and she “really loves how it sounds now.” Reputation, however, is only a quarter of the way through. “To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it,” she admits. The vault tracks from Reputation and Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version) will likely see the light of day at some point — “if that would be something you guys would be excited about.” Until then, at least, we can stream the original 1989 without feeling so guilty about it. OG “Style” fans, you are finally vindicated.
