After nearly six years of legal and emotional struggle, Taylor Swift has officially reclaimed ownership of her first six studio albums. On May 30, 2025, the global pop icon confirmed that she had bought back the master recordings of Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation from Shamrock Capital, the private equity firm that previously acquired them from music executive Scooter Braun. According to Billboard, Swift paid approximately $360 million for the rights — a transaction she called her “greatest dream come true.” “This is really happening,” she wrote in an emotional letter posted to her website. “All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me.”
From Big Machine to Braun
The battle over Swift’s masters began in 2019 when Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group, the label that had signed Swift as a teenager. That $300 million deal gave Braun ownership of her entire early catalog. Swift publicly decried the acquisition, calling Braun’s involvement her “worst case scenario” and accusing him of bullying and exploiting her life’s work.
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She also alleged that Big Machine denied her a chance to buy back her recordings, instead offering a restrictive deal to “earn” one album back for every new album she produced. “I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity,” she said at the time.
Braun later sold the masters to Shamrock Capital in 2020, reportedly for around $360 million. Though Shamrock reached out to Swift for a potential partnership, she declined after learning that Braun would continue to profit from the catalog.
Owning Her Work, On Her Terms
Swift now holds full ownership not only of her songs but also of associated material — including music videos, artwork, photography, and unreleased tracks. In her letter, she praised Shamrock Capital for offering her the opportunity to buy the masters “outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy.”
The 35-year-old thanked her fans for helping make the purchase possible. “The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned The Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music,” she wrote.
How The Eras Tour Funded the Buyback
Swift credited her recent blockbuster achievements as the foundation for her financial independence. Her record-breaking Eras Tour grossed over $2 billion across 149 shows worldwide. The accompanying concert film added another $250 million, becoming the highest-grossing concert film in history.
In addition, her re-recorded albums — dubbed “Taylor’s Versions” — topped charts globally, and her business savvy led Forbes to name her the first musician to earn over $1 billion solely from songwriting and performance.
Status of Reputation (Taylor’s Version)
Despite reclaiming the rights to Reputation, Swift revealed that she had hit a creative “stopping point” in re-recording the album, which tackled her public image and feuds at the time. “It’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved by re-doing it,” she wrote. A preview of the new version of “Look What You Made Me Do” recently aired in The Handmaid’s Tale, but no full release date has been confirmed.
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Swift’s win is about more than just her catalog. She’s become a symbol for artists’ rights in an industry that often strips musicians of control over their work. “Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings… I’m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen,” she noted. In a brief statement following the news, Scooter Braun said, “I am happy for her.” After two decades of struggle, compromise, and reinvention, Taylor Swift can finally say that her life’s work is hers — entirely and unconditionally.