Labels are trying to stop acts from re-recording their albums like Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift, according to reports.The trend – while having been around for decades – has been brought to light recently by Taylor Swift, who has accumulated billions of streams and broke Spotify records with the updated ‘Taylor’s Version’ re-recordings of her albums.The new projects, which have seen her re-record albums such as ‘Red’, ‘Speak Now’, ‘Fearless’ and most recently ‘1989’, came after Scooter Braun bought Big Machine Records (who owned the masters to Swift’s first six albums) back in 2019 for $300million (£247.2m).When news broke of Braun gaining the rights to Swift’s masters, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that this was “the worst-case scenario” for her, calling him out for his “incessant, manipulative bullying”, and proceeded to regain control of her master recordings by re-releasing the albums.Now, major labels such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group are looking to put a stop to artists following in Swift’s footsteps, and have reportedly overhauled contracts for new signees.Previously, artists were expected to wait two periods before they could re-release music – for instance, around five years after the original release date, or two years after the contract ended. However, according to a report by Billboard, top music attorneys are saying that they have been seeing contracts that expand that timeframe up to 30 years.“The first time I saw it, I tried to get rid of it entirely,” Josh Karp, an attorney who saw the new restrictions in UMG contracts told the outlet.