Taylor Swift Tears Up Explaining How She Got Her Music Back

Taylor Swift now owns all of her music — and she still can’t believe it. On the Aug. 13 episode of New Heights, the podcast hosted by her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason, Swift got emotional while telling the story of how she acquired the masters of her first six albums after a years-long battle.

In May, the singer announced that she bought her masters in a letter on her website, meaning she now owns all of the recordings, music videos, photoshoots, and other materials from her first six albums. On the podcast, she started tearing up while recapping her saga, explaining that buying her masters has “always been a huge thing” for her.

“Since I was a teenager, I've been actively saving up money to buy my music back to ever own it in the first place, because it's usually the label that owns it,” she said. Swift left Big Machine Records in 2018 after not coming to an agreement to purchase her masters. Scooter Braun acquired the label, including Swift’s masters, a year later, a deal that she publicly spoke out against.

“I told everybody exactly how that felt for me and what I was going through, and I started basically defiantly re-recording my music because I wanted to own it, and this was the only way I thought it was ever gonna happen.” As a result, “Taylor’s Version” was born.

How Did Taylor Buy Back Her Masters?

Over a year after buying Big Machine, Braun sold Swift’s masters to private equity firm Shamrock Holdings. Following the record-breaking success of the Eras Tour and the four “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings she released, Swift and her team decided to approach the team at Shamrock, whom she had always known to be “very friendly.” However, she wasn’t interested in co-ownership.

“I wanted to buy my music outright,” she said. “I don’t wanna be in a partnership. I don't wanna own 30% of it. I want to own all of it.” But Swift knew this was a “long shot,” so she decided to lead “heart first” and not approach it as a business deal. “This is not, ‘I want to own this asset because of its returns,’” she said. “I want it because this is my handwritten diary entries from my whole life.”

Instead of negotiating with lawyers, Swift sent her mom, Andrea, and brother, Austin, to Los Angeles, and got emotional again as she recalled their meeting with Shamrock. “They told them the whole story of all the times we've tried to buy it, all the times we had gotten plans together and figured out something we thought was gonna work, and it didn't at the last minute,” she said.

After the meeting, Andrea told her daughter that Shamrock was “wonderful,” but warned that she wasn’t sure what they’d decide. A couple of months later, she called Swift again.

“She's like, ‘They, they, we, we... you got your music,’” Swift recalled, getting teary-eyed again. “So sorry — it's literally been so long since this happened, every time I talk about it [I get like this] — I just, like, very dramatically hit the floor for real. Honestly, just started bawling my eyes out... I was just like, ‘Really? Are really? Really? What do you mean? What do you mean?’”

How Did Taylor Tell Travis?

Swift happened to be in Kansas City with Kelce a couple of months after the Super Bowl when she got the call from her mom. At first, she was determined to “get [her] sh*t together” and tell Kelce.

“I knock on the door, he’s playing video games, and I’m trying to say it in a normal way, and I’m just like, ‘Travviiiiissss,’” she recalled. “He puts his headset down. He’s like, ‘Guys, gotta go,’ and I think he thought something was wrong. You come up, and I’m just like, ‘I got all my music back,’ and just start absolutely heaving. Dropped. Had no power in my legs to support myself.”

Kelce backed up her story. To this day, Swift says she “has to tell the short version to everyone” because of how emotional she gets, but she expressed gratitude for how the story ended. “I think about this every day now, but instead of it being an intrusive thought that hurts me, I can't believe this happened,” she said. “Like, how lucky am I?”