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Taylor Swift Owns Two Versions of Four Albums. Now What?

Taylor Swift now owns her original Big Machine albums and her re-recordings of them. Here's how she can monetize both, according to experts.

And she announced her intention to do just that in an interview with Billboard after Ithaca bought her catalog in its 2019 Big Machine acquisition, saying she would license her music for movies and commercials only if she owned the master rights. Whether the music supervisor wants the original or the re-recording, Swift, as the sole owner of both versions, has a financial incentive to put her songs in ads, films, TV shows and movie trailers, says Bryan Calhoun, a marketing consultant. Her four Taylor’s Version re-recorded albums, stuffed with additional material and released in multiple variations, have sold a combined 6 million units to date in the U.S. across digital download and physical formats, according to Luminate.

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