Taylor Swift’s Fight to Perform Her Own Music

On November 14th of this year, Taylor Swift posted to social media that her former record label, Big Machine, was blocking her from performing a medley of her music throughout the years at the American Music Awards. This is because just a few months before, in June, one of her biggest enemies in the industry, Scooter Braun, bought the rights to her first six albums. 

Before the deal was finished, Swift was given the option of “earning” back the rights to her past albums. The deal was that for every album she did, she would earn an album back. The reason she did not take the deal was because of the uncertainty of Big Machines future and that she just wanted to outright own the rights to the music she wrote herself. 

After Taylor posted about wanting to perform her own music, Big Machine fired back and said that everything Taylor said was a lie. They stated that they never barred her from performing her music at the AMA’s and that she owes millions of dollars to Big Machine. 

Her publicist, Tree Paine, came back with a statement saying, “Pease notice in Big Machine’s statement, they never actually deny either claim Taylor said last night in her post” and that Big Machine actually owed Taylor Swift $7.9 million dollars. 

Taylor Swift was later “allowed” to perform her own music at the AMA’s and it was spectacular!

My biggest issue with the whole thing is that one of the top female artists had to fight on social media to be able to perform the music that she wrote by herself. Additionally, the even worse part is that the entire time, Big Machine, Scott Borchetta, and Scooter Braun were saying that she was making this up for attention. 

If this is how Taylor Swift is treated, it makes me wonder how smaller artists are being taken advantage of by their record labels. The music industry in general is very messed up and it seems to be even worse for women. The only thing we can do as consumers of the music industry is to keep an eye on everything and listen to musicians when they speak out on the treatment they have received.