Taylor Swift is moving on.
The singer revealed on Monday that she will be switching record labels, from Big Machine Label Group to Universal Music Group and Republic Records. She will also now own her master recordings for any future music. Part of the deal included helping other artists receive money for their Spotify streams. "I see this as a sign that we are headed towards positive change for creators – a goal I'm never going to stop trying to help achieve," Swift wrote in an Instagram post.
The condition on UMG's Spotify shares: "any sale of Spotify shares result in a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable," means that benefits from Spotify sales shares do not go against an artist's debt, said The Guardian. Music lawyer Gregory Pryor told The Guardian that although the agreement is not radical, Swift using it as an opportunity to help other artists is.
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Swift has been an advocate for streaming services paying artists before. In 2015, Swift wrote a letter refusing to put her album 1989 on Apple Music. She asked the company to pay artists during their three month free trial period, which Apple Music eventually agreed to do.
Her last album, reputation, was her last under contract with BMLG, her label since 2006. BMLG was heavily negotiating to keep Swift signed on, Billboard wrote in August. Swift's sales and streaming account for 34.6 percent of BMLG's revenue, and her masters reportedly could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars over their lifetime. BLMG founder Scott Borchetta discovered Swift in a cafe in Nashville before he had even started the label. In her announcement, Swift thanked Borchetta "for believing in me as a 14-year-old and for guiding me through over a decade of work."
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