Taylor Swift is currently on tour in Australia. Which is why she voted early. Yesterday Taylor posted her third election message on Instagram. The first time, she identified her preferred candidates and criticised the candidate she would not be voting for. The second time she PSA’ed about early voting. This time it was to support, once again, Phil Bredesen. Here she is with her ma, Andrea:
Phil Bredesen is in a tight race for senate in Tennessee. He’s apparently trailing in the latest polls. Will be interesting to see if he gets a bump off of Taylor’s latest PR gift.
So that’s one big decision down and another big decision still to come. Taylor officially becomes a free agent in November as her contract with Big Machine Label Group expires imminently. BMLG has been trying to re-sign for her a while and one of the sticking points is that she wants ownership of her masters. Taylor’s masters account for over 35% of BMLG’s revenue. Billboard reported yesterday that Universal is the only major label now in the running to buy BMLG for reportedly more than $300 million. There’s also an investment company that’s interested too and, obviously, if either were to make the purchase, Taylor’s masters would have to be part of that deal.
Many people in the music industry are keeping a close eye on this situation because there are few recording artists with Taylor’s influence. Every label would want to sign her. Everyone knows she has years and years and years of hit songs left in her. So we could be looking at a record-breaking contract. And, of course, as we’ve seen over the last few years, Taylor is BUSINESS. She’s really, really good at business. Her business right now is to take full ownership of her work, use the power she’s accumulated to negotiate what’s likely to be a monster deal and be in total control of her music, past, present, and future. THAT’s the f-cking show I would want to watch or the book I would want to read. Heads up on this. Whatever happens, it’s going to be a major headline.
