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When Taylor Swift recently tweeted that men associated with her former record label wouldn’t let her perform her old songs at the American Music Awards, the record label and the men associated with it endured death by a thousand cuts from Swifties.
Well, not literally. But Scooter Braun — whose biz, Ithaca Holdings, acquired T Swift’s OG record label, Big Machine, this year and now owns the masters of her first 6 albums — said he and his family received death threats after Tay took to Twitter. He also denied blocking her from performing her songs and said he doesn’t have the legal right to do so.
… is a testament to the (kinda terrifying) power of superstardom and social media reach. T Swift made an emotional appeal to her fan (and stan) base of more than 85m Twitter followers, and effectively pulled them in to opine on a contract negotiation that the public really doesn’t know much about.
Record labels typically maintain those rights as compensation for taking a financial risk on an artist. But Swift, who signed with Big Machine at age 15, has been clear about wanting full control of her music and made this a sticking point when she signed with a new label last year.
But buying those master recording rights from Braun could cost Swift hundreds of millions of dollars, the NYT reports.
It’s unclear whether the two sides will be able to shake it off and come to a mutually beneficial agreement — but it’s very apparent that Swift’s fans will love her forever and always.