Reclaiming The Mic: Taylor's Version And The Remixing Of Ownership

Intro

Taylor Swift recently walked into the 2026 Songwriters Hall of Fame class, becoming the second-youngest inductee ever. But beyond chart dominance and Grammy wins, Swift has also rewritten the conversation around copyright, licensing, and master rights. In her own words, 'All I know is a simple name, and everything has changed".

Contractual obligations have long shaped artistic control, particularly in the music industry. Well before recent disputes, artists had already exposed structural tensions in music rights ownership. Tina Turner's divorce negotiations famously underscored the economic weight of identity, as she secured the continued use of her stage name - a valuable commercial asset - while relinquishing claims to certain financial interests. Def Leppard later illustrated a different pressure point: by re-recording parts of their catalogue, the band reduced dependence on legacy masters and regained leverage over digital licensing and revenue flows. Few images captured these conflicts more vividly than Prince appearing with the word "slave" written across his face, a stark protest against contractual constraints and control of master rights. Against this backdrop, Swift's campaign for her masters is best understood not as an outlier, but a highly visible and strategically executed assertion of rights within a long-standing industry struggle.

Verse

Music copyright has always involved two separate assets. Publishing rights refer to the underlying compositions in a song (lyrics and music) typically held by the songwriter and/or the composer. Master rights on the other hand, pertain to the actual sound recording of a song, determining who controls its reproduction, distribution, and licensing.

Typically, music artists sign contracts with record labels, giving the latter ownership of master recordings in exchange for funding production, marketing, and promotion of their music. This arrangement, while financially practical for up and coming artists, frequently leaves them without control over their creative output. To illustrate the benefits of controlling one's own masters, the case of British singer Kate Bush is compelling. Her 1985 hit Running Up That Hill was revived by season 4 of Netflix's Stranger Things in 2022 and because she owned master rights to her decades old recording, she was in a position to profit $2.3 million in a single month 37 years later¹.

Swift's early career followed the traditional assignment model. Her first six studio albums were recorded under Big Machine Records, which retained the ownership over the master rights. In 2019, Ithaca Holdings acquired the Big Machine Label Group along with the master recordings of Swift's albums. Swift condemned the transaction, claiming she had not been offered a fair and feasible opportunity to buy her own masters. In October 2020, Ithaca Holdings further sold the rights to a private equity firm, Shamrock Holdings, and Swift claimed to be in a disadvantageous position again.

Chorus

In a ground-breaking move, Swift then began re-recording albums originally recorded under the Big Machine Label Group. Recording agreements commonly include re-recording restriction clauses, which bar artists from making new recordings of the same compositions for a defined period following release. Once those restrictions expire, U.S. law enables re-recordings through Section 114(b) of the Copyright Act. This provision clarifies that the rights of a sound recording owner do not extend to the making of another sound recording consisting entirely of an independent fixation of other sounds, even where the later recording captures the same musical work. This reflects a fundamental copyright distinction: protection in a sound recording covers the particular recorded performance, not the underlying song. A newly created recording, produced through a fresh performance without copying the original recorded sounds, constitutes a separate copyrightable asset. Swift's re-recordings therefore created substitute masters that could be exploited and licensed independently, reshaping the economic balance of catalogue ownership.

Thereafter, fans saw a reprisal of some of Swift's most popular albums under the parentheses 'Taylor's Version'. The strategy proved both artistically and commercially successful. Red (Taylor's Version) broke Spotify's record for the most-streamed album in a single day by a female artist, while 1989 (Taylor's Version) achieved the largest opening week of any album in 2023, with 1.6 million equivalent units sold in the US and close to 3.5 million units sold globally². In 2025, Swift finally secured ownership of her original masters from Shamrock Holdings, a symbolic culmination of her years-long battle for creative autonomy.

Plug In: India

Controversies over master control and royalty participation are therefore hardly novel to the Indian music industry, . Indian music rights disputes are deeply rooted in producer-centric contracting practices that concentrate ownership of master recordings while often relegating composers and lyricists to lump-sum compensation structures. Artists and creators have repeatedly found themselves in conflict with labels and producers over contractual terms governing the exploitation of their works. A frequently cited illustration of industry tensions emerged in 2014, when actor Abhay Deol appeared at a public event with a symbolic black eye, describing it as a protest against what he characterised as unfair contracting practices by a major music label.While the clauses in contention were not revealed, what emerged was the central role of contractual obligations in the music industry³.

The 2012 amendments to the Copyright Act, 1957, introduced a significant safeguard for composers and lyricists by ensuring that, even if they assign their copyrights, they cannot contractually give up their right to receive royalties for certain exploitations of their works. In practical terms, authors of literary and musical works incorporated into films or sound recordings retain a continuing entitlement to royalties, particularly when those works are communicated to the public. The amendments therefore shifted industry practice away from absolute buy-outs.

The proviso to section 17 affirms artist rights over an underlying work incorporated as a part of a cinematographic film⁴. Such rights were judicially acknowledged in the case of RDB & Co. v. HarperCollins Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. (2023)⁵, wherein the court held that once the rights of the author in the original work have been established, the rights of the producer of the film will not affect or dilute the rights of the author in the underlying work⁶.

Where the amendment to section 17 confers a right to artists, the amendment to section 18 protects the right to royalties through a restriction. As per the said proviso, the author of a literary or musical work included in a cinematograph film shall not assign the right to receive royalties to the assignee of the copyright⁷. In Saregama India Ltd. v. Vels Film International Ltd. (2025), the Delhi High Court reaffirmed that producers hold primary rights over cinematograph films, but also acknowledged the need for fair compensation to composers and performers.

With respect to contractual obligations, musicians in India also took note of the 2024 decision in Sajjan Kumar Duhan and Anr. v. Shehnaaz Gill⁸, wherein the court recognised the undue influence that music/record labels may often exercise over budding artists and singers. The court recognized that "freedom of contract must be founded upon equality and bargaining power between the contracting parties. The party having less bargaining power is left with little or no choice but to accept the unfair and unreasonable terms imposed upon it by the party with superior bargaining power."⁹

Outro

Taylor Swift's re-recording strategy, and its commercial success, has triggered a noticeable shift in how artist contracts are negotiated. What was once viewed as an exceptional dispute has now become part of a broader global movement toward greater artist leverage, with others such as JoJo adopting similar approaches.

Labels have responded with contractual mechanisms colloquially dubbed 'Swift clauses', primarily by extending re-recording restrictions - in some cases to 10–20 years - to preserve the value of existing masters. Some agreements also address competitive conduct, including provisions aimed at limiting how artists promote substitute versions. At the same time, alternative models are emerging, such as earlier master reversion structures paired with enhanced short-term revenue shares for labels.

Swift's dispute has ultimately reinforced a wider industry recalibration - a first-of-its-kind Netflix deal is reported with actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, where all 1,200 people involved in their film will be eligible for a one-time bonus if the production meets performance expectations. Thus, ownership and revenue participation are no longer passive contractual outcomes but central bargaining variables in modern entertainment deals.

Footnotes

1. Kate Bush has now made $2.3 million from her 37-year-old song featured in 'Stranger Things (https://fortune.com/2022/07/07/kate-bush-running-up-that-hill-stranger-things/ )

2. Taylor Swift Breaks Her Own Record With '1989 (Taylor's Version)', (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-1989-taylor-version-records-1235637476/)

3. Abhay Deol-T-series tussle (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/music/news/t-series-issues-a-statement-on-royalty-issue-posed-by-abhay-deol/articleshow/28881461.cms

4. Section 17, The Copyright Act, 1957.

5. RDB & Co. v. HarperCollins Publishers India Pvt. Ltd., FAO(OS) (COMM) 167/2023.

6. Ibid.

7. Section 18, The Copyright Act, 1957.

8. Sajjan Kumar Duhan and Anr. vs. Shehnaaz Gill, CR No.1855 of 2024

9. Ibid

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