Taylor Swift vs The Music Industry
Image courtesy of Los Angeles Times
By JENNIFER LIM ‘20
This year, Taylor Swift will be celebrated as Artist of the Decade at the American Music Awards, and she has a Netflix documentary on the way. However, despite these achievements, Swift has been experiencing difficulty with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, representatives of Swift’s record label, Big Machine Label Group. She posted a series of screenshots from her Notes app on Twitter, updating her fans on her AMA performance as well as her upcoming documentary.
Braun and Borchetta had originally prevented Swift from both performing her own music at the AMA show and using clips of her music and performances in her upcoming documentary because they legally own her music and have her tied to a contract. Big Machine Label Group recently said that Taylor Swift will legally be able to perform her songs at the awards show. However, these negotiations were made between Big Machine and the company producing the AMAs. Swift writes, “This is WRONG. Neither of these men had a hand in the writing of those songs. They did nothing to create the relationships I have with my fans.” This topic is relevant within the scope of many other artists feeling trapped by their signed contracts. Swift brings attention to the public about how much control agencies should have over the artists they manage versus how much agency creative ownership should grant artists.
When this argument over the AMAs and the documentary took place is not specifucally when Swift started to publicly talk about her struggles with men in the music industry who “[exercise] tyrannical control.” According to The Atlantic, this summer, when Braun bought Big Machine from Borchetta, all of Taylor Swift’s music became his to profit from.
Swift says she shared her situation online not only because she wants to be able to perform the music she wrote, but also because she wants to “change the awareness level for other artists and potentially help them avoid a similar fate.” What Swift is going through with the ownership of her music is an unfortunate, yet common problem in the music industry. We, as the audience, rarely know about the laws and regarding profits or ownership of an artist’s work. When we purchase their music or use streaming platforms, we don’t know where our money is going—whether it’s going to the record label or to the artist. Though these disagreements can affect any artist, Swift is able to use her platform and money to advocate for herself; however, small artists don’t have the privilege of being able to do so and are bound by the complex contracts they sign. Sometimes they unknowingly condemn themselves to the long term impacts of the contract, in search of fame or money through a big label.
Unfortunately, artists have been ripped off by their record label contracts and have been unable to take ownership of their work or profit from it for a while. Forbes writes that TLC, despite being a wildly successful group and earning millions, signed away the rights to their profits to a record label and eventually filed for bankruptcy. Tinashe, before releasing her highly anticipated album Joyride in 2018, struggled with her record label and the lack of ownership and control over her own music. In an interview with ABC, she talked about leaking her own songs before the release.
Through her conflict with Braun and Borchetta, Swift gives us a glimpse into the pitfalls of the music industry. She brings to attention the unfair concentration of power in the hands of powerful men and labels who, morally, should have no ownership of music they had no part in creating. By raising awareness for this ongoing problem in the industry, Swift brings informs the public on what supporting these labels can mean for artists.