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Taylor Swift officially owns her entire catalog of music, including her videos, artwork, and unreleased music. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter announced the news in a letter to fans on May 30, six years after Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings purchased Swift’s work from her former label Big Machine Label Group in 2019.
“All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” Swift said in the letter on her site. “And all my music videos. All the concert films. The album art and photography. The unreleased songs. The memories. The magic. The madness. Every single era. My entire life’s work.” Swift continued, writing, “To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it.”
Over the last six years, Swift has re-recorded several of her first few albums, releasing them as as Taylor’s Version, including LPs like Fearless, Red, 1989, and Speak Now. During that time, she also dropped brand-new projects including The Tortured Poets Department, Midnights, and Folklore in the process, to name a few. Following the news that Swift bought her music, many of Swift’s first few albums on vinyl are now on sale on Target, Walmart, and Amazon, from her debut to Reputation (both of which aren’t currently listed on her site).
“I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but never owned until now,” Swift wrote in her letter. “All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy.”
Over the last few months, some Swifties have speculated that Swift’s next re-recorded release would be Reputation, though Swift explained in her letter that she hasn’t “even re-recorded a quarter of it.” Swift continued, saying that “the Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief.
“To be perfectly honest,” Swift said, “it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
Swift later added that she’s completed the re-recording for her debut, writing that “I really love how it sounds now.”
Swift wrapped up her letter by saying “Thanks to you and your goodwill, teamwork, and encouragement, the best things that have ever been mine… finally actually are.”
Shop all of Swift’s albums on vinyl on her site and Amazon — while they’re still in stock.
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