Taylor Swift, a famous worldwide singer and songwriter, has made the news recently as she surprised fans with new versions of her old songs. Currently, she has nine albums out; however, she no longer owns six of these albums, causing her to re-record each of them. She has already started the process by releasing the new recording of her second album, Fearless, this time adjusting the name to Fearless (Taylor’s Version).

In 2004, Swift signed a music publishing deal with Sony Music, then went on to signing with Big Machine Records in 2006. Under that label, Taylor Swift released: Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation. These albums are highly awarded and incredibly successful. During multiple conversations with Scott Borchetta, the owner of the record label, Swift mentioned that if he ever sold her music, she would want to buy it herself. It was not until November of 2020 that her masters (final pieces) were sold to a producer named Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande’s producer), without Taylor Swift’s knowledge. 

Braun bought her masters for a little over 300 million dollars, which stunned Swift as she did not intend for the rights of the songs to be sold. Even with her frustration with the music industry, Taylor Swift never stopped pursuing music. She is now signed under Republic Records and will now own every piece of music she releases. Currently, Swift owns three albums: Lover, Folklore, and Evermore. Swift has been releasing newer versions of her songs with Red (Taylor’s Version) set to be released next on November 19th. To market the new versions of the songs, Swift has announced the albums she plans to release and gives her fans clues about when the song will be released as a way to keep her fans engaged. Swift also adds new songs onto the old albums with songs “from the vault”, which are songs she wrote at the same time which did not make it onto the album. Swift will publish a video of scrambled words coming out of a vault, leaving it up to her fans to decode the words that will be the new songs on the album. The fans find these videos very entertaining, however they have no idea in which she is releasing them. Until then, the fans are eagerly awaiting her next announcement.