NEW YORK (AP) — Taylor Swift has regained control over her entire body of work.
In a lengthy note posted to her official website on Friday, Swift announced: “All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me.”
The pop star said she purchased her catalog of master recordings — originally released through Big Machine Records — from their most recent owner, the private equity firm Shamrock Capital. She did not disclose the amount.
In recent years, Swift has been re-recording and releasing her first six albums in an attempt to regain control of her music.
“I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now,” Swift wrote to fans in the note. “The best things that have ever been mine … finally actually are.”
Swift’s re-recordings were instigated by Hybe America CEO Scooter Braun’s purchase and sale of her early catalog and represents Swift’s effort to control her own songs and how they’re used. Previous “Taylor’s Version” releases have been more than conventional re-recordings, arriving with new music “from the vault,” Easter eggs and visuals that deepen the understanding of her work.
In between re-recordings, she has released new music, including last year’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” announced during the 2024 Grammys and released during her record-breaking tour.
So far, there have been four rerecorded albums, beginning with “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” and “Red (Taylor’s Version)” in 2021. All four have been massive commercial and cultural successes, each one debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Swift’s last re-recording, “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” arrived in October 2023, just four months after the release of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” That was the same year Swift claimed the record for the woman with the most No. 1 albums in history.
Fans have theorized that “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” would be next: On May 19, “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” aired nearly in full during the opening scene of a Season 6 episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Prior to that, the song was teased in 2023’s Prime Video limited-series thriller “Wilderness” and in Apple TV+’s “The Dynasty: New England Patriots” in 2024. Also in 2023, she contributed “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” to Prime Video’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
But according to the note shared Friday, Swift says she hasn’t “even re-recorded a quarter of it.” She did say, however, that she has completely re-recorded her self-titled debut album “and I really love how it sounds now.”
Swift said that both her self-titled and “Reputation (Taylor’s Version)” could “still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right.”
A representative for Swift did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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