Taylor Swift’s Music Rights and the Changing Nature of Music Ownership

My daughter didn’t know what it meant, but she knew she needed to purchase “Taylor’s version” of Fearless when bringing her purse to Target last year.

And while we accomplished that singular mission, last week’s news that Taylor Swift purchased the rights to her music has us thinking: Will we ever worry about this type of news again? Let’s remove Taylor’s singular, out-sized impact from the discussion and dive into how the rapidly-changing environment of music creation and distribution has all but removed this news story for artists going forward.

Why? Spotify.

While a simple, one-word response, the explanation is incredibly nuanced. Spotify has virtually removed any and all barriers from musicians publishing their own music. Who needs a label when you can just drag and drop a music file for an untold number of listeners? This side-stepping of the music label has resulted in an entire generation of musicians who only know a universe where they ‘own’ their original songs from the get-go.

Prior to Spotify, bands had to hope that someone from a label was at one of their shows, they opened their mail to listen to their music, and so on. Today’s recipe involves strong 1:1 marketing, fan engagement, and a commitment to steadily growing your number of shows / tours. There is definitely a place for labels in the music ecosystem; however, the argument over ‘who owns the music’ might be dead — or at the very least, reserved for when an artist is ready to retire and sell their catalog.

Circling back to Taylor: Her incredibly strong PR and storytelling mechanism evangelized her fans (among them my daughter) to drive this story for her. In doing so, she exerted tremendous amounts of pressure on anyone that owned her music other than her. While an interesting story to watch, it might just be the last time we ever hear of one like this again.

Do you know why Prince called himself the Artist?
That’s what they call us in our contracts.