Earlier I talked about Taylor’s “re-recorded albums". If you're confused, Taylor announced in 2019
that she would be re-recording her first six albums. Why is she doing this? Swift signed to Big Machine
Records in 2005. Big Machine owns the original recordings of her first six albums, as is typical with
many recording deals. In her new contract, Swift made sure to secure ownership of her future masters.
“Artists should own their own work for so many reasons" (Swift 2021). One of the major reasons is
because she wants to be able to make certain decisions for her music and what happens with it. Given
her unique position, platforms like Spotify have everything to gain by supporting her new versions.
Meanwhile, the fans who are the most active streamers of her old music have become well aware of her
intentions, and will be by her side.
The first re-recorded album was “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)" which came out in April of 2021.
This album had exactly the same songs as the original album, along with six songs “from the vault."
When a song is from the vault, it means that it never made the cut to be on the original album, so it
gave Taylor the perfect opportunity to release those songs. In November of 2021, Taylor released the
next album which was “Red (Taylor’s Version)". This version of the album had ten tracks from the vault
including a longer version of “All Too Well" making it ten minutes long. This album has had great
success including how It became the most-streamed album in a day from a female artist on Spotify, with
more than 90.8 million global opening-day streams. She now has four more albums to re-record and
release, and there are great things to come.
