Taylor Swift is a Pioneer of Intellectual Property Rights
Every time Taylor Swift walks out of her door she facilitates massive changes for intellectual property rights of artists in the music industry.
Attribution
Toglenn, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Taylor Swift is one of the most popular artists in the world. Even if you don’t like her music, you have to admire her fighting spirit. Lately, she has been in a public battle with Ticketmaster over the availability of tickets for her upcoming tour. Before that, she fought with music streaming services to promote selling albums—thus, profiting off the work put into creating those albums—instead of allowing them to be streamed for free. Before that, she was fighting for her ownership rights over her music. Many of Taylor Swift’s battles have to do with her intellectual property rights, and the outcomes create changes and impacts for all musicians.
For something to be copyrightable, it has to be fixed in a tangible medium. Musicians can obtain copyrights in two aspects of their works: (1) the musical composition, such as the lyrics and melodies, and (2) the sound recordings. The owner of a copyright has exclusive rights to control the reproduction, distribution, and performance of the work publicly and digitally, among other rights. Countries differ in the underlying philosophy and/or reasoning for creating intellectual property protections. For instance, the United States follows an economically-driven model, believing that creating limited monopolies for creators promotes further creation by other innovators. Another possibility is the European Union and its member states, which subscribe to a rights-model: the idea that intellectual property protection protects the rights of the creator, not necessarily to promote further innovation. The latter philosophy is likely one to which Taylor Swift would subscribe.
When Taylor Swift signed with Big Machine Records in 2005, she signed away the ownership rights to her songs’ recordings and was placed under a re-recording restriction, but she still maintained the copyright over the lyrics and melodies. After signing with a new label in 2018, Big Machine and its new owner, Scooter Braun, attempted to restrict her performances of these songs under the re-recording restriction. But her copyright over the musical composition allowed her to do what she did next: after the end of the re-recording restriction in 2020, she re-recorded her songs and released them as “Taylor’s Version.” This was an act to reclaim the products of her creativity. While Big Machine Records may own the copyrights to the recordings she made with them, in exercising her copyright over the musical compositions, she was able to create new recordings that she completely owns, as provided in her new contract with Universal Music Group.
Copyright law and the way the public understands it has changed in the wake of this drama. The Music Modernization Act, passed in October 2018, implemented provisions to make licensing fairer for creators and more efficient for digital music providers. Since then, a number of bills have been introduced in the House and Senate offering greater protections to artists and creators over their exclusive rights to their creative works, including the Ask Musicians for Music Act of 2019, and the American Music Fairness Act, both of which address a creator’s exclusive rights to sound recording dissemination.