An unexpected music-world alliance formed last week. Rapper and noted pot-stirrer Azealia Banks stood up for pop icon Taylor Swift. They had a common enemy: Record labels. Banks had re-posted a Billboard headline about labels taking measures to maintain their ownership of artists’ work and prevent artists from reclaiming their catalogs, using Swift’s recent Taylor’s Version re-recordings as an example. In a now-deleted Instagram post, she wrote, “Lmao labels need to get a real job the era of being wealthy in proximity to real talent is over.”
Tensions between artists and their record labels have been raging in recent years. It’s not a new conflict, but more and more, artists are airing their grievances in the public forum, speaking out against what they see as manipulative labels and management companies.
Dua Lipa, displeased with her management company, acquired the rights to her catalog of songs just last week. Sky Ferreira has spoken openly about Capitol Records sabotaging her career and keeping her from releasing new music. The outrage spread from Ferreira to her fans, who recently bought a digital billboard in Times Square that read, “Free Sky Ferreira.” Just last year, artists like Halsey spoke out about labels stalling their releases unless they came up with a viral TikTok.
Taylor Swift is just the latest, and loudest, in a long line of artist-label feuds. And following her very public fall-out with former label Big Machine and her blockbuster series of Taylor’s Version remakes, she’s helped the battle come to a head. As a result, the power dynamics that have long governed the music industry could be changing for good.
Prince’s trailblazing example
Outcries for artist independence and ownership have been bubbling under the surface of the industry for years. A pioneer in this area was Prince. After signing a $100 million contract with Warner Bros. in 1992, Prince fought for years to release music on his terms and own his masters. He appeared in public with the word “Slave” written on his face and changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, asking to be referred to as “the Artist Formerly Known as Prince,” to make a statement about the control his label wielded over him.
Prince was the first artist to sell albums directly to fans on the Internet, in an effort to fully control his releases. He even launched a 2001 website to house his work, including exclusive tracks, videos, radio shows, albums, specialty playlists and more. But as the web grew, Prince would later pull his much of his music from YouTube and streaming services, up until his death.
“When I first started out in the music industry, I was most concerned with freedom,” Prince said in his 2004 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction speech. “Freedom to produce, freedom to play all the instruments on my records, freedom to say anything I wanted to.”
Swift’s last straw
Taylor Swift’s shift from pop star, full stop, to a pop star who also happens to be a trailblazing industry maverick started in 2019. Swift signed a deal with Republic Records after her contract with Big Machine, which had released her first six albums, had expired. And when high-powered manager Scooter Braun purchased Big Machine and became the owner of Swift’s masters, she tried to purchase them back.
The news set Swift off. She cited the “incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years” in a Tumblr post at the time. She listed the evidence: “Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it…Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked.” (She’s referring to the nude Swift-look-alike wax figure featured in West’s music video for “Famous.”)
She ultimately walked away from the table with Big Machine when they gave her an offer that would only further disempower her. “For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in,” Swift wrote.
“Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it,” she went on. “This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept.”
Taylor’s Version of liberation
In another 2019 Tumblr post, Swift revealed she was “not allowed” to perform her old songs on television “because they claim that would be rerecording my music before I’m allowed to next year.” The wheels started turning.
“I feel very strongly that sharing what is happening to me could change the awareness level for other artists and potentially help them avoid a similar fate,” she said. “The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished. This is WRONG. Neither of these men had a hand in the writing of those songs.”
The fighting continued, leading up to Braun’s sale of Swift’s masters in 2020 for a cool $300 million. But Swift couldn’t let Braun come out on top, so in 2021, she made a decision. Swift would re-record her old albums and own the complete rights herself. The idea was that when she’d drop a new re-recording, it would rack up streams and hurt the original recording’s numbers, and put money in her pocket. The plan worked.
Taylor Swift’s original 1989 recording from 2014 dropped 44% in sales and streams the week the album’s Taylor’s Version was released last month. The original 1989 saw 27.8 million on-demand streams, while the remake earned over 375 million in the same time frame. This success was mirrored with each of the three previous re-releases since she started the project in 2021, with 2008’s Fearless, 2012’s Red and 2010’s Speak Now.
Swift is inspiring artists to expose shady record labels and reclaim their work. But now, as more artists vie for bigger pieces of the pie, labels are preparing to protect their portions.
Labels tighten their grips
Sky Ferreira responded to the news of Swift’s re-recordings back in 2019 with stories of her similar experiences with what she framed as an exploitative industry. “I signed contracts when I was 15 & I’m still paying the consequences for it. Every contract I have ever signed has always been set up to take advantage of me/my work in some way,” she wrote on Instagram. “Do not let people pressure you into giving away your rights or settle for less…Holding out & finding a situation where you can thrive/have control over your life is worth so much more.”
Just this week, Ferreira was taken off of Capitol’s website roster after years of disputes with the label. Ferreira has previously revealed in interviews that Capitol set her up for failure, refusing to provide funds for touring, nixing some of her music from streaming platforms and repeatedly delaying her sophomore album. Ferreira, who’s now 31, said she feels like she “got robbed of [her] 20s” and believes she was “grey-listed” by Capitol after the label called her “crazy,” “mentally ill,” “difficult,” “unprofessional” and a “drug addict.” Ferreira continued, “My life was taken from me…It was like literally being in solitary confinement. I felt like I was gagged and bound.”
Last year, labels found yet another demand to place upon their artists — TikToks. Many artists, including Charli XCX, FKA Twigs and Florence Welch, posted about feeling powerless. Halsey claimed her record label was withholding her music unless she went viral. “Basically, I have a song that I love that I want to release ASAP,” the singer said in a TikTok at the time. “But my record label won’t let me. I’ve been in this industry for eight years and I’ve sold over 165 million records, and my record company is saying I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok.”
“Everything is marketing, and they are doing this to basically every artist these days,” Halsey continued. “I just wanna release music, man. And I deserve better tbh. I’m tired.”
The Swift effect
Taylor’s Version–style re-recordings are the industry’s latest hot-button issue. After watching the value of Swift’s original recordings decrease, record labels are trying to prevent their artists from following her lead. According to a Billboard report, major labels are making changes to contracts for newly signed artists with this in mind. Standard contracts typically require artists to wait five to seven years from the release date to re-record their music, or two years after their contract expires. But now, some labels are asking artists not to re-record their music until between 10 and 30 years after leaving the record companies.
One lawyer, Gandhar Savur, told Billboard, “I recently did a deal with a very big indie that had a 30-year re-record restriction in it. Which obviously is much longer than I’m used to seeing. I think the majors are also trying to expand their re-record restrictions but in a more measured way — they are generally not yet able to get away with making such extreme changes.”
Attorney Chris Castle has argued that these restrictions “may backfire.” Swift, being the most popular artist in the world, is in a unique situation, to say the least. Castle says that by trying to add in new restrictions, labels could attract unwanted attention or retaliation, like from the FTC or artists’ lawyers.
When Dua Lipa bought the rights to her publishing catalog last week, it was in response to an agreement that had her giving away around 20 percent of her income to her management company. She set up her own publishing company with her father, aiming to manage all her commercial assets. Now, she’s keeping everything she earns and is on track to becoming a billionaire, just like Swift. And just as she followed in Swift’s footsteps, more artists could soon do the same.