{"id":973558,"date":"2019-11-15T12:35:20","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T19:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=913150"},"modified":"2019-11-15T12:35:20","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T19:35:20","slug":"can-taylor-swift-really-be-banned-from-performing-her-old-albums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/can-taylor-swift-really-be-banned-from-performing-her-old-albums\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Taylor Swift Really Be Banned From Performing Her Old Albums?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The spat between Taylor Swift<\/a>, her former label boss Scott Borchetta, and music mogul Scooter Braun<\/a> has devolved into a sturm-und-drang public saga. Months after Swift panned<\/a> Braun\u2019s $300-million takeover of Borchetta\u2019s Big Machine Label Group, the singer is saying that the two executives are preventing her from performing her older hits<\/a> at the American Music Awards \u2014 but the validity of both the claim and the alleged action are murky.<\/p>\n

On Thursday night, Swift publicly reignited her feud with Borchetta and Braun, who own the masters of her first six albums. The singer claimed she\u2019s \u201cnot allowed to perform my old songs on television because they claim that would be re-recording my music before I\u2019m allowed to next year.\u201d But in a statement<\/a> Friday, Big Machine shot back that \u201cthe narrative [Taylor has] created does not exist,\u201d adding that Swift\u2019s allegations are \u201cbased on false information\u201d and that the label did not ever tell the singer she couldn\u2019t perform at the AMAs. \u201cAll we ask is to have a direct and honest conversation,\u201d the company wrote. \u201cWe do not have the right to keep her from performing live anywhere.\u201d In true Swift fashion, she responded immediately, via a rep,<\/a> that Big Machine did<\/em> deny \u201cthe request for [\u2026] the American Music Awards.\u201d<\/p>\n

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At hand are two questions: first, whether or not Big Machine is actually trying to block Swift from performing pre-2019 hits onstage at the awards show on November 24th. (Big Machine\u2019s statement refers to Swift\u2019s performance at the AMAs at large without specifically addressing her Big Machine-owned catalog; Swift\u2019s counter-statement does not explicitly say Big Machine refused to let her perform that catalog at the event.) Secondly: Can Big Machine actually prevent Swift from performing her older songs?<\/p>\n

Under the re-record restriction in Swift\u2019s contract, which is boilerplate for major artist contracts, Big Machine is legally allowed to block the performance \u2014 but it would be unusual for the label to interpret the clause that way, industry veterans say. \u201cA television broadcast is technically a re-record,\u201d entertainment lawyer John Seay tells Rolling Stone.<\/em> \u201cHowever, labels usually don\u2019t care about preventing that type of thing, because a broadcast recording is emphatically not going to compete with the label\u2019s original master. In fact, the broadcast recording is actually likely to boost sales and streams of the label\u2019s original master. You don\u2019t normally see a label try to prevent an artist from, for example, playing [Saturday Night Live<\/em>], because it\u2019s ultimately good for the label, and is not the type of activity that a re-record restriction is designed to prevent.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the particular case of Swift \u2014 who has publicly announced that she wants to re-record her masters<\/a> to take back those revenue streams \u2014 Big Machine might now see an \u201copportunity to get some leverage\u201d by enforcing the full breadth of the re-record clause, Seay says. The case somewhat evokes a 2016 incident that found Kesha\u2019s label withdraw its approval<\/a> of her performance at the Billboard Music Awards, but that matter was complicated by Kesha\u2019s then-ongoing legal dispute with producer Lukasz \u201cDr. Luke\u201d Gottwald. Susan C. Genco, a music lawyer and lecturer at UCLA\u2019s law school, told<\/a> the New York Times<\/em> Friday that while labels might have a \u201ctechnical argument\u201d to prevent taped television performance of songs they own, it\u2019s not a position she\u2019s ever witnessed before.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou don\u2019t normally see a label try to prevent an artist from, for example, playing SNL<\/em>, because it\u2019s ultimately good for the label, and is not the type of activity that a re-record restriction is designed to prevent.\u201d \u2014 John Seay, entertainment lawyer<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Outside of their dueling public statements, neither the Borchetta\/Braun camp nor Swift\u2019s team have responded to press inquiries about the specifics of the situation. What\u2019s clear is that both parties are using the tussle over the awards-show performance as a launching point for broader accusations of foul play and mistreatment; in an escalation of the claims they lobbied four months ago, Swift and Big Machine are now both saying the other party contractually owes millions of dollars to the other. In her Thursday social media posts, Swift explicitly asked fans and other Braun-managed artists to stand with her in solidarity. The Twitter hashtag #IStandWithTaylor trended all Friday morning, and a Change.org petition to \u201clet Taylor Swift perform HER art\u201d has garnered more than 77,000 signatures<\/a> in less than a day.<\/p>\n

Swift said earlier this year that she plans to begin re-recording her first six albums, which span her 2006 eponymous debut to 2017\u2019s Reputation<\/em>, in November 2020, presumably following the expiration of the re-record clause in her contract with Big Machine.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Brittany Spanos<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spat between Taylor Swift, her former label boss Scott Borchetta, and music mogul Scooter Braun has devolved into a sturm-und-drang public saga. Months after Swift panned Braun\u2019s $300-million takeover of Borchetta\u2019s Big Machine Label Group, the singer is saying that the two executives are preventing her from performing her older hits at the American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-973558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 17:33:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}