taylor swift iridescent smoke bombs thread 2019 - lover

(please excuse the omitted Q in my rush to make u think)

https://pitchfork.com/news/taylor-swifts-music-ownership-controversy-with-scooter-braun-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters/

p clearheaded piece about this

posts upthread by people who hate taylor swift so much they’d rather defend the status quo of the record industry = a real good look

lol at the notion of Taylor Swift as anything other than her own gigantic status quo.

i'm aware that taylor swift is rich

It's not just that she is rich, it's that as far as I can tell she has yet to even make a case *why* she should get her masters back and have more power and make money at the expense of the indie label she made successful then left for Universal? Like I said earlier, a lot of this does not add up. At the least it seems inconceivable that this all went down without the knowledge of her or her management team, and if it did, she needs new management.

she has yet to even make a case *why* she should get her masters back

she's never owned her masters, this is the problem, they now belong to someone who sucks ass, this is the other problem

also josh i wasn't referring to you at all, mainly the two posters who've accused her of playing the victim which is some coded misogynistic nonsense

No, I know. I'm just asking what makes her special. Few artists, let alone at that level, own their own masters, unless maybe they were part of some renegotiated deal. Which I guess Big Machine tried, she didn't like, she left for more money and I assume more power elsewhere. Whether or not Scooter is an asshole seems irrelevant.

'All recording artists should own their masters' is a perfectly reasonable stance, regardless of who said recording artist happens to be.

i'm not arguing that she's special! and "that's just the way it is" seems more like a bruce hornsby song than a counterargument

She's only special insofar as she has more money/power to leverage than the overwhelming majority of singers/musicians. While that does make her insufferable on some level, I'm glad she's using her privilege for a good cause, even if she has something to gain in the process.

To be fair, the offer Swift claimed Big Machine offered her (the 'one for one' deal) was straight garbage.

hmm. should David Attenborough own the rights to Blue Planet II?

The fight to own masters is nothing new, people have been fighting this fight for a century. It is definitely not reasonable imo for a label, a business partner, to just give the masters back to the artist when they ask. They deserve some sort of compensation, don't they? The irony here is that Big Machine was the small indie, made huge by her success. She left for an even bigger major label, and we know how much they care about masters. I mean, we're not talking about Swift fighting with Greg Ginn and SST here.

The offer Swift claims Big Machine made may have been garbage, or maybe it was never made. These people all lie, all the time, especially when there are millions of dollars to be made.

The fact that it's nothing new doesn't make it any less significant imho. I understand your cynicism (and I frankly dislike TS's music, to boot), but if small steps are to be potentially made here, I'm all for it.

But she's not leading some artists rights charge is she? She just wants her masters back so she can have more power and make more money. How does that help anybody else?

The media is making it into a narrative about Taylor wanting to own the masters (which she does want obv) when, if you read the Tumblr post, it is clearly about Scooter owning said masters

"When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them."

And she has a right to be upset. But corporate properties change hands all the time. she should have just partnered up with someone and bought big machine herself.

How does that help anybody else?

If it can create a precedent and draw further attention to the issue, that's good enough in my book.

I think back to Prince's battle with Warner Bros. Why did he re-sign with Warner Brothers in the first place? Because they gave him a shit ton of money. Ironically, with Prince, when he was releasing music himself he kind of did a shitty job of it.

But corporate properties change hands all the time. she should have just partnered up with someone and bought big machine herself.

yes, if only Taylor could've seen into the future at that time and saw that her life's work thus far would be sold to Scooter Braun

Is Braun a known bad guy? The little I had read about him before this mention anything particularly negative... (tho someone upthread mentioned an unflattering New Yorker profile that I wasn't aware of).

*"didn't mention anything..."

Even the New Yorker profile wasn't that unfattering. But again, what difference does it make that she doesn't like the guy? Whoever gets to make those decisions? I'm at peace with you selling my masters ... except to Scooter Braun! There is definitely more to this story, more we don't know. It's weird that she made that Tumblr post in the first place, coming out guns blazing, and then going silent. Doesn't she often stir up attention getting controversies before each album release?

I mean the post does literally end with a "call to action" to buy her new album.

Nihilistic hot take: the way it's framed in the media™ is just as important as what's 'actually' going on.

'All recording artists should own their masters' is a perfectly reasonable stance, regardless of who said recording artist happens to be.

There's a very easy* way to make sure you own your masters: FUND THE PROJECT YOURSELF, IN FULL, FROM BEGINNING TO END. "Hey, Giant Corporation - I want you to loan me a bunch of money to record, market, and promote an album...but I want to own it outright afterward" is not a perfectly reasonable stance, regardless of which giant corporation it happens to be.

*not actually easy at all

There's a very easy*

I do agree that it's rich (pun intended) coming from her, as she could have indeed funded herself (or rather her father could have funded her) from the get-go. It's just that a public scandal microscopically increases the likelihood that this very real issue will be discussed and debated in terms that have an infinitesimal (and I wish to stress this) chance of maybe (although probably not) changing something. (I don't know what's wrong with me, I want to be vaguely optimistic about this for once.)

She should pull a Fogerty and just refuse to play any of those Big Machine songs.

I was wondering if she'll record a "Zanz(/Vanz) Kant Danz" type song.

Most of her songs are like that.

i think this might become an inflection point in a post-me too world about the rights of women in the music industry and the way contracts in the pop/major label world are designed. if anything it will at least have raised some level of awareness for artists who are unsigned going forward.... of course that's a pretty small slice of the industry, and would do nothing to address i.e. the myriad number of rappers who get signed to deals by shady dudes when they're 15 or whatever before they even get approached by majors in the first place

What does this have to do with the rights of women specifically?

Does Jay Z own all his masters? For some reason I think he does. If so, how did he pull that off? Does Beyonce own her masters? She might!

if you can't see the fault lines this discussion is breaking along, you're very dense

by "this discussion" i mean about taylor and scooter in broader society, not the one happening specifically in this thread

A summary of "unfollows," etc.: https://hollywoodlife.com/2019/07/01/taylor-swift-blocks-justin-bieber-demi-lovato-spotify/

"Kacey is also taking major heat from Tay and her Swifties after she hit the like button on Scooter’s wife’s post defending him."

xpost I guess I am just very dense. This all seems like a mess of rich people feuding in public about petty grade-school bullshit.

The news comes from the ‘Taylor Swift Spotify’ Twitter account, which claims to ‘pull data using Spotify’s Web-API to identify’ Taylor’s Spotify account activity.

Not creepy at all!

Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez, Adele, and Gwen Stefani have all have reportedly unfollowed Scooter on social media after his acquisition of Taylor’s life’s work. Even his own client, Ariana Grande, deleted her Instagram story congratulating Scooter on the purchase after seeing Tayor’s message. Halsey wrote a lengthy tweet describing how Taylor was the inspiration behind why she writes all of her own music and ended with “I am standing with her” with a broken heart emoji.

I mean, just reading that is kind of ridiculous. Unfollowed on social media! A lengthy tweet! This is truly the worst, stupidest era of everything.

the media's focus is often not on the core issues because the core issues are a bit more complex and less trashy

anyway Jordan otm i think, also the fact is women are disproportionately affected by the way major label artists are dealt with largely because there's little representation of women within the industry, so there are fewer people to advocate for them. i'm not sure if this is what he was getting at but there's that too.

Is Braun a known bad guy? The little I had read about him before this mention anything particularly negative... (tho someone upthread mentioned an unflattering New Yorker profile that I wasn't aware of).

― stan by me (morrisp), Tuesday, July 2, 2019 12:53 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is what I was wondering, besides that tweet about k-pop fans I haven't heard anything

assuming the kpop thing is just his mismanagement of CL's western pop career, or something related

Like if you read Justin Bieber's bro-ish, culty Instagram post ("One thing i know is both scooter and i love you (...) Neither scooter or i have anything negative to say about you we truly want the best for you."), he (Bieb) seems to take all responsibility for taunting Taylor with that screenshot; and it does seem kind of bizarre to think that a biz guy like Braun would personally get involved in something like that? But these are all bizarre people, so who knows.