How Taylor Swift Wrested Back Ownership Of Her Masters

Introduction

Taylor Swift is arguably one of the biggest popstars of our time, and there is no denying the immense impact she has had on the musical world. Her feud with her former recording label and a celebrity talent agent has been fascinating from a legal and intellectual property (IP) perspective for how Ms. Swift has managed to bring into limelight the issue of master rights in the music industry. This is a look at how Ms. Swift ingeniously managed to wrest back control of her work through the rerecording of her albums.

Background to the issue

In 2006, a then 15-year-old Taylor signed a contract with the Big Machine Label Group (BMLG) that spanned all the way till 2018 and gave them the rights over all the master recordings of her albums in that period in exchange for promoting her music.Master recordings are at the heart of this controversy because they are the original recordings of the music that can later be licensed out by labels for various use