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36 WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW ONLINE [Vol. 98:35
100 songs, originally recorded over the span of eleven years.
2
This
colossal undertaking constitutes Swift’s attempt to regain control of her
catalog after her label sold her original masters to third parties.
3
In so
doing, Swift touched off a renewed debate over long simmering issues of
intellectual property rights, artist-label relationships, and the music
industry at large.
4
Impossible to overlook in Swift’s struggle were the
facts that this upset came over a decade into an extremely fruitful career,
and that said career began in earnest when Swift signed a recording
contract with Big Machine Records at just fifteen years old.
5
In other
words, Swift was a “legal infant” when she signed her recording
contract—that is, she was under the age of eighteen, the age at which the
law allows individuals to bind themselves via contract without permission
from a guardian or a court. Swift may be unique in how high her star has
risen, but she is far from the first child to sign away years of labor and
creative control without even being able to vote. Recording artist and
fellow rerecorder JoJo, for example, signed her own recording contract at
an even younger age, just twelve years old.
6
While JoJo and Swift
experienced varying degrees of success in wresting back control of their
narratives, countless similarly situated artists undoubtedly failed to
succeed at all.
Thankfully, as long as labels have desired to develop and profit off of
young talent, so too have activists and lawmakers stepped in to make the
process more equitable for everyone involved. In some states, courts are
2. TAYLOR SWIFT, TAYLOR SWIFT (BONUS TRACK VERSION) (Big Machine Label Group 2006);
TAYLOR SWIFT, FEARLESS (PLATINUM EDITION) (Big Machine Label Group 2009); Taylor Swift,
SPEAK NOW (DELUXE EDITION) (Big Machine Label Group 2010); TAYLOR SWIFT, RED (DELUXE
EDITION) (Big Machine Label Group 2012); TAYLOR SWIFT, 1989 (Big Machine Label Group 2014);
TAYLOR SWIFT, REPUTATION (Big Machine Label Group 2017).
3. D’Amelio, supra note 1.
4. See, e.g., Ann Herman, Note, You Belong with Me: Recording Artists’ Fight for Ownership of
Their Masters, 18 NW. J. TECH. & INTELL. PROP. 239, 239 (2021) (proposing changes to copyright
law “that would place artists’ rights to ownership and control of their work at the forefront of the
laws’ purpose”); Emily Tribulski, Note, Look What You Made Her Do: How Swift, Streaming, and
Social Media Can Increase Artists’ Bargaining Power, 19 DUKE L. & TECH. REV. 91, 91 (2021)
(discussing how artists can leverage their social media capital in label negotiations).
5. Raisa Bruner, Here’s Why Taylor Swift Is Re-Releasing Her Old Albums, TIME (Mar. 25, 2021,
5:06 PM), https://time.com/5949979/why-taylor-swift-is-rerecording-old-albums/
[https://perma.cc/L9QT-YU4M]; see also Andrew Trendell, The Record Deal that Taylor Swift
Signed When She Was 15 is About to Come to an End, NME (Aug. 28, 2018),
https://www.nme.com/news/music/record-deal-taylor-swift-signed-15-come-end-2371599
[https://perma.cc/5DGX-Y7E6] (explaining that Taylor Swift “signed to Big Machine
Records . . . back in 2006” at just 15 years old).
6. Dee Locket, JoJo Spent Nearly a Decade Fighting Her Label and Won. Here’s What She
Learned, in Her Own Words., VULTURE (Nov. 2, 2015), https://www.vulture.com/2015/10/jojo-
fighting-the-major-label-man-in-her-own-words.html [https://perma.cc/4Q2N-9GTW].