Taylor Swift: Singer, Songwriter, Copyright Innovator
from the control-matters dept
Taylor Swift is in the news, and not just because she has become the most decorated solo artist of all time. The fact that Taylor Swift has already been mentioned multiple times on Walled Culture underlines that she is also an important – if surprising – figure in the world of copyright. That’s because Swift has been re-recording her albums in order to gain full control over them. She lost control because of the way that copyright works in the music industry, where it is split between the written song and its performance (the “master recording”). Record label contracts typically contain a clause in which the artist grants the label an exclusive and total license to the master. By re-recording her albums, Swift can add control of the master to her control of the written songs.
Swift’s long battle is well-known in the industry. But an article on the Harvard Law Today site from a few months back adds an important detail to this story that I have not seen reported anywhere else. It draws on comments made by Gary R. Greenstein, a “technology transactions partner” at Wilson Sonsini, one of the top US law firms. It concerns a common legal requirement in contracts to wait a certain number of years before artists are allowed to re-record an album:
It’s significant, Greenstein said, that the first Taylor’s Version wasn’t released until she’d been off [record label] Big Machine for three years. Until then, she was legally bound not to re-record any of the material, and this time frame was typical of record deals in the past. But this is the part of the equation that Swift likely changed for good.
According to Greenstein, the major record labels used to be fairly reasonable in terms of the length of the prohibition they imposed on on re-recording. But he says that’s no longer the case as a result of Swift’s successful project to regain full control of her own works:
record companies are now trying to prohibit re-recordings for 20 or 30 years, not just two or three. And this has become a key part of contract negotiations. “Will they get 30 years? Probably not, if the lawyer is competent. But they want to make sure that the artist’s vocal cords are not in good shape by the time they get around to re-recording.”
In other words, as soon as a creator finds a way to take back control from intermediaries that have routinely derived excessive profits from the labor of others, the copyright world fights back with new legal straitjackets to stop other artists daring to do the same. That’s yet another reason for creators to retain full control of their works, and to shun traditional intermediaries that try to impose one-sided and unfair contracts.
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally published to Walled Culture.
Filed Under: control, copyright, gatekeepers, middlemen, re-recording, taylor swift
Comments on “Taylor Swift: Singer, Songwriter, Copyright Innovator”
And this surprised anyone?
Copyright is only enforceable against an entity with as much or less wealth then you.
So it makes perfect sense that the only way it is used is to the sole benefit of those in power.
She has fuck you money. She could start her own artist-centered label. And the industry is really in need of disruption.
Re:
Sure, but lots of people have done that. Usually they’re affiliated with the big companies anyway (e.g. for “distribution”), and often they’re outright bought by those companies eventually.
I don’t see Swift as doing anything particularly innovative. Okay, re-recording songs to fully own them might be kind of good for Swift, but the lack of innovation is made obvious by the record contracts already having clauses to prohibit exactly this. And, ultimately, this just gets us back to the (recently) “traditional” hundred-year-plus copyright model, except with a different owner. Nothing really changes for the public.
In his earlier adult life, the sitcom master Chuck Lorre longed to make it as a musician. I seem to recall him explaining in an interview that some of his first TV work included a stint writing for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for which he wrote the theme song. Because the publishers of the day didn’t realize what was going to happen, he managed to retain the copyright. Like Swift’s case, that ended that.
wg
MAGAs buying $4000 signed guitars to then smash them, sounds like a business opportunity.
Intermediary Value
These intermediaries should be able to extract value while they are in turn providing value, most likely in the form of promotion that a new artist would otherwise not get. But Taylor swift hasn’t gotten any particular value like this in a long long time. Maybe 3 years is too short but 20-30 is laughable.
Re:
20-30 years doesn’t just make me laugh; it makes me furious. I say that as an independent, unsigned musician.