7 ms·

Taylor Swift: Don’t know what else to do

106 points by garyng 7y ago

cheez 7y ago
Wait, so she sold "her" music and it's no longer hers.... What am I missing here?
- ToFab123 7y ago
  > On Sunday, June 30 [2019], it was announced that Scooter Braun and his company, Ithaca Holdings LLC, acquired Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group in a deal that’s reportedly worth over $300 million. Through buying Borchetta’s company, Braun now also has ownership of Taylor Swift’s master recordings made when she was with the label, including her first six albums. https://www.bustle.com/p/why-doesnt-taylor-swift-own-the-rights-to-her-music-its-actually-more-common-than-you-think-18159717 https://www.bustle.com/p/why-doesnt-taylor-swift-own-the-rig...
  - hobofan 7y ago
    > in a deal that’s reportedly worth over $300 million So if she were to really put the money where her mouth is, she could probably buy the rights to her old records with her reported $360 million of net worth, or find a more friendly recording label willing to do so.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - smnrchrds 7y ago
      She actually tried that, but was unsuccessful.
- cyberferret 7y ago
  I think the big factor here is that "she" didn't sell her music herself per se. The record label, which got all rights to her music from the contract she signed, decided to sell the rights to her music to another party. She didn't really have any say on the matter if I recall. The original owners of the music (the label she signed with) seemed to do right by her and she was comfortable with that arrangement, but the new owners of her music have put different demands on her which is severely restricting her from performing her music to her fans. It is a crazy situation, but happens quite often. Imagine if the owners of the Queen catalog said that their actual music could not be used for the recent hit movie - then it wouldn't have been anywhere near the hit that it was. That was the problem with the Jimi Hendrix movie a couple of years back. Jimi's sister, who owns the rights to his music now, said they couldn't use his actual songs in the movie, so what you ended up with was Jimi 'sounding' music and it wasn't the same at all...
- sintaxi 7y ago
  Artists own the songs (melody + lyrics). Record labels own the recordings. The artist also provides a commitment that they wont re-record their songs with another label for an agreed period of time.
bhauer 7y ago
For those who, like me, don't visit the domain called facebook dot com: https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1195123215657508867?s=20 https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1195123215657508867...
- wallace_f 7y ago
  To be fair Twitter isn't overwhelmingly better.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    You mean the domain called twitter dot com?
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    Would be nice if someone could just copy and paste the text here.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
      Don’t know what else to do TAYLOR SWIFT·THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2019·READING TIME: 3 MINUTES Guys - It’s been announced recently that the American Music Awards will be honoring me with the Artist of the Decade Award at this year’s ceremony. I’ve been planning to perform a medley of my hits throughout the decade on the show. Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun have now said that I’m not allowed to perform my old songs on television because they claim that would be re-recording my music before I’m allowed to next year. Additionally - and this isn’t the way I had planned on telling you this news - Netflix has created a documentary about my life for the past few years. Scott and Scooter have declined the use of my older music or performance footage for this project, even though there is no mention of either of them or Big Machine Records anywhere in the film. Scott Borchetta told my team that they’ll allow me to use my music only if I do these things: If I agree to not re-record copycat versions of my songs next year (which is something I’m both legally allowed to do and looking forward to) and also told my team that I need to stop talking about him and Scooter Braun. I feel very strongly that sharing what is happening to me could change the awareness level for other artists and potentially help them avoid a similar fate. The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished. This is WRONG. Neither of these men had a hand in the writing of those songs. They did nothing to create the relationship I have with my fans. So this is where I’m asking for your help. Please let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel about this. Scooter also manages several artists who I really believe care about other artists and their work. Please ask them for help with this - I’m hoping that maybe they can talk some sense into the men who are exercising tyrannical control over someone who just wants to play the music she wrote. I’m especially asking for help from The Carlyle Group, who put up money for the sale of my music to these two men. I just want to be able to perform MY OWN music. That’s it. I’ve tried to work this out privately through my team but have not been able to resolve anything. Right now my performance at the AMA’s, the Netflix documentary and any other recorded events I am planning to play until November of 2020 are a question mark. I love you guys and I thought you should know what’s been going on. Taylor
ggm 7y ago
(not a tay tay fan. not actually listening to much music these days, I can't quite get Bach and Beefheart out of my head) Normally I'm a "the contract sets the limits" person but in artist's rights, an given the extent to which artists are both young, and exploited, and wind up in legally dubious relationships which then magify out and up, I think the intent should be "what's the right thing here, no matter what the contract says" And I think unless she received heinous amounts of fuck you money, and sold her rights for their current worth, unless she did that, if this is just normal A&R nickel-and-diming, then they should be told to go away, and she should get to perform her songs. "you can't perform your songs" is a very sad place to wind up. it does nobody any good. She very possibly did receive heinous amounts of A&R support but I would also believe a lot of leeching has been going on. The industry is a giant machine to suck revenue out of art and put it into tax efficient structures for other people. They learned from masters: the movie industry. Who did those masters learn from? The Sheet music industry. Pop will eat itself.
- hos234 7y ago
  They are getting doxxed already. Howard Stern knew how to use his fan base to deal with Mr. Pig Vomit. This is a similar story but for the social media age. Exerting this kind of pressure on execs works, if you know what you are doing.
- m0zg 7y ago
  “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.” -- Hunter S Thompson Sounds like Taylor is discovering the "negative side" at this point. Be that as it may, though, if she signed a contract and made hundreds of millions of dollars with it, she should abide by the terms of the contract. Don't like it? Don's sign. Or at least don't extend when the time comes to renew.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > Normally I'm a "the contract sets the limits" person but in artist's rights, an given the extent to which artists are both young, and exploited, and wind up in legally dubious relationships which then magify out and up, I think the intent should be "what's the right thing here, no matter what the contract says" If young artists cannot sign away their rights to the songs they create they won't get funded in the first place. > And I think unless she received heinous amounts of fuck you money, and sold her rights for their current worth, unless she did that, if this is just normal A&R nickel-and-diming, then they should be told to go away, and she should get to perform her songs. This is absurd reasoning. "You have to pay for IP rights. Also, if the artist is successful, you have to pay them again in 10 years depending on how successful that become." If they want that kind of a deal, it's usually possible to negotiate points for money, especially with unknown talent. There is this idea that artists have some sort of moral right to control the destiny of their creation. This is garbage thinking. Quite frankly, becoming a pop star is a huge gamble. Most people who get fronted money by labels don't make it. Those that do pay for all the failures. If you want to call that "exploitation", so be it. But I don't have much sympathy for her predicament.
yellow_lead 7y ago
>The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished. >This is WRONG. Is that the message? Is it not the case that this is the result of a legally binding contract?
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  Right. Is this just celebrity with a huge audience privilege whereby they get to skirt contracts they signed by leveraging their fan base to exert pressure on the other party?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    How ever much of a dick move it may or may not be from the other party, she’s absolutely guaranteed to drum up more public support for her grievance by framing it as though there was some sort of sexism involved, than she would be otherwise.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    Contracts she only signed because the music industry had all the leverage. A music industry that is filthy rich, and notorious for their exploitative contracts, so I wouldn't rush to their defense.
  - adultSwim 7y ago
    Companies on HN exert pressure all the time. She's being savvy.
- slouch 7y ago
  signed by a child
xwowsersx 7y ago
Can someone explain the background here? I only have a vague idea of how the music industry works. I don't understand what's going on here.
- 0xfffafaCrash 7y ago
  Taylor Swift signed a deal with a record label instead of being an independent artist because it seemed (and possibly was) advantageous at the time and now that she is rich and famous and doesn't need the label, she no longer wants to hold up her side of the deal (giving the label certain rights to her earlier music for a certain period of time) and so now she is playing victim to get her fans to pressure the label into giving her more generous rights to the music she signed to them. Basically when you sign with a record label you give them certain rights with respect to creative control, music ownership and licensing in exchange for them investing in helping you produce and market your music to a wide audience, network in the industry, tour, etc. In short, they help you make it big and take on early costs and risks and in exchange you make them rich if you do become extremely successful.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deogeo 7y ago
    It should be noted that music label contracts are notoriously one-sided, and artists often make their labels millions without seeing a dime themselves.
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      Do record labels make crazy profit for the capital costs? Or are they one of those businesses where for every Taylor Swift getting screwed by not getting a fair percentage of the value of her earnings, are there 50 other artists who got a good size advance and never made any money? I honestly don't know. I just think we have a tendency to only think about the successful artists when we evaluate the fairness of a contract.
    - 7y ago
amluto 7y ago
She’s too young and her music is too recent to invoke her right to terminate her copyright transfer, which would otherwise be a nice solution.
- tzs 7y ago
  Another possibility that comes to mind is a compulsory license. For those not familiar with compulsory licenses, US copyright law provides that for certain kinds of works and uses of those works, instead of obtaining a license from the copyright owner you can pay a fee to the Copyright Office and they can give you the license. The Copyright Office sets the amount of the fee. The money still goes to the copyright owner. It doesn't matter if the copyright owner doesn't want you to have a license [1]. If you pay the fee, you get the license. Unfortunately for Swift, I don't think that taking a compulsory license would help her here. I don't think that there is a compulsory license available for broadcast rights or for performance rights, one or both of which would be necessary for performing the songs on a TV broadcast. I think that the only compulsory license available for songs is the right to make and distribute audio recordings. [1] One big exception. In the case of recordings of songs, compulsory licenses are not available until after there has been a release authorized by the copyright holder. Once the first authorized release is out, others can take compulsory licenses and make and release their own recordings.
stupendousyappi 7y ago
Evidently, starting next year, Swift will have the legal right to do something harmful to the owners of Big Machine Records- rerecord her old songs. The owners of that company currently have the legal right to prevent her from playing her old songs. There are many artists who I think have been exploited by the executives of their industry, but Taylor Swift isn't one of them. I expect that she was generously compensated for giving up ownership of those songs. If she wants to change the terms of that deal, the other parties have offered to negotiate.
- steve19 7y ago
  Presumably she had a lot less power early in her career when she originally recorded those albums.
gorgoiler 7y ago
I think there are two things that weaken Swift’s message here: 1/ There’s no need to call out gender — “be a good little girl and shut up”, referring to “these men”, etc. Not during 2019’s entertainment industry harassment crisis. This is an intellectual property rights issue but it feels like Swift is trying to nudge it in another direction, unfairly. 2/ When your net worth is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars it seems calculating and disingenuous to try to have your way in the court of public opinion. Asking your fans to directly contact the other party in the legal dispute feels like straight up bullying.
- solipsism 7y ago
  I think there are two things that weaken Swift’s message here 1/ There’s no need to call out gender If you think that'll weaken her message, you haven't been paying attention to society lately. This will resonate strongly with the people she intends it to resonate with. Maybe you mean it makes the message less compelling to you personally. I'm not sure Taylor cares about that though... 2/ When your net worth is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars it seems calculating and disingenuous to try to have your way in the court of public opinion. Again, I don't think you're thinking things through. Taylor's fans are incredibly loyal. The only people who are likely to think of this as bullying are already not her fans. If anything, this tells me Taylor should consider politics. It seems like she knows how the game is played these days.
  - xwdv 7y ago
    Please don’t give her anymore ideas. She should just take her money and retire peacefully dressing fancy and traveling the world.
    - ncallaway 7y ago
      So you'd like her to be good and shut up?
    - SllX 7y ago
      There aren’t any original ideas here. Taylor Swift is intelligent and already knows the political climate and can ruthlessly exploit it to her own benefit. We are all our own best advocates, she’s not any different.
cameldrv 7y ago
Cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352108 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17
HNLurker2 7y ago
Is this the end of hacker news?
- solipsism 7y ago
  This is an interesting phenomenon. If your biases prevent you from appreciating that, go on to the next story.
- minimaxir 7y ago
  If there's anything Hacker News likes to discuss, it's copyrights of original works.
dylan604 7y ago
Maybe she can turn herself into a symbol, and fix it that way?
iduxniy 7y ago
Uuuh, look what you made them do
iamleppert 7y ago
Apparently she doesn’t understand the concept of ownership. Yes, she created the songs. However, once you sell something to someone else it no longer belongs to you. This includes works of art.
yevster 7y ago
So she’s crying a river over being forced to live up to the obligations of contracts she willingly signed. Most of her fans reading this can only dream of having a fraction of the breaks she’s had or the money she’s made. So she won’t have a documentary about her on Netflix. Neither will anyone reading this, but somehow we’re all supposed to feel sorry or outraged for her?
brazzledazzle 7y ago
Was this flagged by moderators? @dang
- minimaxir 7y ago
  Given the other comments, it was likely user-flagged.
  - brazzledazzle 7y ago
    Weird. Copyright is one of HN’s favorite topics in my experience.
wruza 7y ago
Pretty sure that with such a huge fan base, these guys could appear to sexually harass a couple of acquaintances or more. This is a very unstable situation happening right now, depending on their positions in the business. Maybe it’s better to let the girl sing her songs? Everyone would win.
rambojazz 7y ago
She should try CC-BY-SA.
czottmann 7y ago
Full text, readable away from FB: https://outline.com/https://www.facebook.com/notes/taylor-swift/dont-know-what-else-to-do/10156631338812023/ https://outline.com/https://www.facebook.com/notes/taylor-sw... PSA: I just prepend https://outline.com/ https://outline.com/ to the URL of a FB post to get the actual text (as FB domains are resolved to 0.0.0.0 in my house).
thewinnie 7y ago
isn't she been trying to trademark 22 number? and once we swap sides, will she act differently?
fredsanford 7y ago
Maybe she should talk to John Fogerty...

106 points by garyng 7y ago

cheez 7y ago

Wait, so she sold "her" music and it's no longer hers.... What am I missing here?

ToFab123 7y ago
> On Sunday, June 30 [2019], it was announced that Scooter Braun and his company, Ithaca Holdings LLC, acquired Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group in a deal that’s reportedly worth over $300 million. Through buying Borchetta’s company, Braun now also has ownership of Taylor Swift’s master recordings made when she was with the label, including her first six albums. https://www.bustle.com/p/why-doesnt-taylor-swift-own-the-rights-to-her-music-its-actually-more-common-than-you-think-18159717 https://www.bustle.com/p/why-doesnt-taylor-swift-own-the-rig...
- hobofan 7y ago
  > in a deal that’s reportedly worth over $300 million So if she were to really put the money where her mouth is, she could probably buy the rights to her old records with her reported $360 million of net worth, or find a more friendly recording label willing to do so.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - smnrchrds 7y ago
    She actually tried that, but was unsuccessful.
cyberferret 7y ago
I think the big factor here is that "she" didn't sell her music herself per se. The record label, which got all rights to her music from the contract she signed, decided to sell the rights to her music to another party. She didn't really have any say on the matter if I recall. The original owners of the music (the label she signed with) seemed to do right by her and she was comfortable with that arrangement, but the new owners of her music have put different demands on her which is severely restricting her from performing her music to her fans. It is a crazy situation, but happens quite often. Imagine if the owners of the Queen catalog said that their actual music could not be used for the recent hit movie - then it wouldn't have been anywhere near the hit that it was. That was the problem with the Jimi Hendrix movie a couple of years back. Jimi's sister, who owns the rights to his music now, said they couldn't use his actual songs in the movie, so what you ended up with was Jimi 'sounding' music and it wasn't the same at all...
sintaxi 7y ago
Artists own the songs (melody + lyrics). Record labels own the recordings. The artist also provides a commitment that they wont re-record their songs with another label for an agreed period of time.

bhauer 7y ago

For those who, like me, don't visit the domain called facebook dot com: https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1195123215657508867?s=20 https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1195123215657508867...

wallace_f 7y ago
To be fair Twitter isn't overwhelmingly better.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  You mean the domain called twitter dot com?
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Would be nice if someone could just copy and paste the text here.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    Don’t know what else to do TAYLOR SWIFT·THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2019·READING TIME: 3 MINUTES Guys - It’s been announced recently that the American Music Awards will be honoring me with the Artist of the Decade Award at this year’s ceremony. I’ve been planning to perform a medley of my hits throughout the decade on the show. Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun have now said that I’m not allowed to perform my old songs on television because they claim that would be re-recording my music before I’m allowed to next year. Additionally - and this isn’t the way I had planned on telling you this news - Netflix has created a documentary about my life for the past few years. Scott and Scooter have declined the use of my older music or performance footage for this project, even though there is no mention of either of them or Big Machine Records anywhere in the film. Scott Borchetta told my team that they’ll allow me to use my music only if I do these things: If I agree to not re-record copycat versions of my songs next year (which is something I’m both legally allowed to do and looking forward to) and also told my team that I need to stop talking about him and Scooter Braun. I feel very strongly that sharing what is happening to me could change the awareness level for other artists and potentially help them avoid a similar fate. The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished. This is WRONG. Neither of these men had a hand in the writing of those songs. They did nothing to create the relationship I have with my fans. So this is where I’m asking for your help. Please let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel about this. Scooter also manages several artists who I really believe care about other artists and their work. Please ask them for help with this - I’m hoping that maybe they can talk some sense into the men who are exercising tyrannical control over someone who just wants to play the music she wrote. I’m especially asking for help from The Carlyle Group, who put up money for the sale of my music to these two men. I just want to be able to perform MY OWN music. That’s it. I’ve tried to work this out privately through my team but have not been able to resolve anything. Right now my performance at the AMA’s, the Netflix documentary and any other recorded events I am planning to play until November of 2020 are a question mark. I love you guys and I thought you should know what’s been going on. Taylor

ggm 7y ago

(not a tay tay fan. not actually listening to much music these days, I can't quite get Bach and Beefheart out of my head) Normally I'm a "the contract sets the limits" person but in artist's rights, an given the extent to which artists are both young, and exploited, and wind up in legally dubious relationships which then magify out and up, I think the intent should be "what's the right thing here, no matter what the contract says" And I think unless she received heinous amounts of fuck you money, and sold her rights for their current worth, unless she did that, if this is just normal A&R nickel-and-diming, then they should be told to go away, and she should get to perform her songs. "you can't perform your songs" is a very sad place to wind up. it does nobody any good. She very possibly did receive heinous amounts of A&R support but I would also believe a lot of leeching has been going on. The industry is a giant machine to suck revenue out of art and put it into tax efficient structures for other people. They learned from masters: the movie industry. Who did those masters learn from? The Sheet music industry. Pop will eat itself.

hos234 7y ago
They are getting doxxed already. Howard Stern knew how to use his fan base to deal with Mr. Pig Vomit. This is a similar story but for the social media age. Exerting this kind of pressure on execs works, if you know what you are doing.
m0zg 7y ago
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.” -- Hunter S Thompson Sounds like Taylor is discovering the "negative side" at this point. Be that as it may, though, if she signed a contract and made hundreds of millions of dollars with it, she should abide by the terms of the contract. Don't like it? Don's sign. Or at least don't extend when the time comes to renew.
nordsieck 7y ago
> Normally I'm a "the contract sets the limits" person but in artist's rights, an given the extent to which artists are both young, and exploited, and wind up in legally dubious relationships which then magify out and up, I think the intent should be "what's the right thing here, no matter what the contract says" If young artists cannot sign away their rights to the songs they create they won't get funded in the first place. > And I think unless she received heinous amounts of fuck you money, and sold her rights for their current worth, unless she did that, if this is just normal A&R nickel-and-diming, then they should be told to go away, and she should get to perform her songs. This is absurd reasoning. "You have to pay for IP rights. Also, if the artist is successful, you have to pay them again in 10 years depending on how successful that become." If they want that kind of a deal, it's usually possible to negotiate points for money, especially with unknown talent. There is this idea that artists have some sort of moral right to control the destiny of their creation. This is garbage thinking. Quite frankly, becoming a pop star is a huge gamble. Most people who get fronted money by labels don't make it. Those that do pay for all the failures. If you want to call that "exploitation", so be it. But I don't have much sympathy for her predicament.

yellow_lead 7y ago

>The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished. >This is WRONG. Is that the message? Is it not the case that this is the result of a legally binding contract?

xwowsersx 7y ago
Right. Is this just celebrity with a huge audience privilege whereby they get to skirt contracts they signed by leveraging their fan base to exert pressure on the other party?
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  How ever much of a dick move it may or may not be from the other party, she’s absolutely guaranteed to drum up more public support for her grievance by framing it as though there was some sort of sexism involved, than she would be otherwise.
- deogeo 7y ago
  Contracts she only signed because the music industry had all the leverage. A music industry that is filthy rich, and notorious for their exploitative contracts, so I wouldn't rush to their defense.
- adultSwim 7y ago
  Companies on HN exert pressure all the time. She's being savvy.
slouch 7y ago
signed by a child

xwowsersx 7y ago

Can someone explain the background here? I only have a vague idea of how the music industry works. I don't understand what's going on here.

0xfffafaCrash 7y ago
Taylor Swift signed a deal with a record label instead of being an independent artist because it seemed (and possibly was) advantageous at the time and now that she is rich and famous and doesn't need the label, she no longer wants to hold up her side of the deal (giving the label certain rights to her earlier music for a certain period of time) and so now she is playing victim to get her fans to pressure the label into giving her more generous rights to the music she signed to them. Basically when you sign with a record label you give them certain rights with respect to creative control, music ownership and licensing in exchange for them investing in helping you produce and market your music to a wide audience, network in the industry, tour, etc. In short, they help you make it big and take on early costs and risks and in exchange you make them rich if you do become extremely successful.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deogeo 7y ago
  It should be noted that music label contracts are notoriously one-sided, and artists often make their labels millions without seeing a dime themselves.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    Do record labels make crazy profit for the capital costs? Or are they one of those businesses where for every Taylor Swift getting screwed by not getting a fair percentage of the value of her earnings, are there 50 other artists who got a good size advance and never made any money? I honestly don't know. I just think we have a tendency to only think about the successful artists when we evaluate the fairness of a contract.
  - 7y ago

amluto 7y ago

She’s too young and her music is too recent to invoke her right to terminate her copyright transfer, which would otherwise be a nice solution.

tzs 7y ago
Another possibility that comes to mind is a compulsory license. For those not familiar with compulsory licenses, US copyright law provides that for certain kinds of works and uses of those works, instead of obtaining a license from the copyright owner you can pay a fee to the Copyright Office and they can give you the license. The Copyright Office sets the amount of the fee. The money still goes to the copyright owner. It doesn't matter if the copyright owner doesn't want you to have a license [1]. If you pay the fee, you get the license. Unfortunately for Swift, I don't think that taking a compulsory license would help her here. I don't think that there is a compulsory license available for broadcast rights or for performance rights, one or both of which would be necessary for performing the songs on a TV broadcast. I think that the only compulsory license available for songs is the right to make and distribute audio recordings. [1] One big exception. In the case of recordings of songs, compulsory licenses are not available until after there has been a release authorized by the copyright holder. Once the first authorized release is out, others can take compulsory licenses and make and release their own recordings.

stupendousyappi 7y ago

Evidently, starting next year, Swift will have the legal right to do something harmful to the owners of Big Machine Records- rerecord her old songs. The owners of that company currently have the legal right to prevent her from playing her old songs. There are many artists who I think have been exploited by the executives of their industry, but Taylor Swift isn't one of them. I expect that she was generously compensated for giving up ownership of those songs. If she wants to change the terms of that deal, the other parties have offered to negotiate.

steve19 7y ago
Presumably she had a lot less power early in her career when she originally recorded those albums.

gorgoiler 7y ago

I think there are two things that weaken Swift’s message here: 1/ There’s no need to call out gender — “be a good little girl and shut up”, referring to “these men”, etc. Not during 2019’s entertainment industry harassment crisis. This is an intellectual property rights issue but it feels like Swift is trying to nudge it in another direction, unfairly. 2/ When your net worth is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars it seems calculating and disingenuous to try to have your way in the court of public opinion. Asking your fans to directly contact the other party in the legal dispute feels like straight up bullying.

solipsism 7y ago
I think there are two things that weaken Swift’s message here 1/ There’s no need to call out gender If you think that'll weaken her message, you haven't been paying attention to society lately. This will resonate strongly with the people she intends it to resonate with. Maybe you mean it makes the message less compelling to you personally. I'm not sure Taylor cares about that though... 2/ When your net worth is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars it seems calculating and disingenuous to try to have your way in the court of public opinion. Again, I don't think you're thinking things through. Taylor's fans are incredibly loyal. The only people who are likely to think of this as bullying are already not her fans. If anything, this tells me Taylor should consider politics. It seems like she knows how the game is played these days.
- xwdv 7y ago
  Please don’t give her anymore ideas. She should just take her money and retire peacefully dressing fancy and traveling the world.
  - ncallaway 7y ago
    So you'd like her to be good and shut up?
  - SllX 7y ago
    There aren’t any original ideas here. Taylor Swift is intelligent and already knows the political climate and can ruthlessly exploit it to her own benefit. We are all our own best advocates, she’s not any different.

cameldrv 7y ago

Cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352108 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

HNLurker2 7y ago

Is this the end of hacker news?

solipsism 7y ago
This is an interesting phenomenon. If your biases prevent you from appreciating that, go on to the next story.
minimaxir 7y ago
If there's anything Hacker News likes to discuss, it's copyrights of original works.

dylan604 7y ago

Maybe she can turn herself into a symbol, and fix it that way?

iduxniy 7y ago

Uuuh, look what you made them do

iamleppert 7y ago

Apparently she doesn’t understand the concept of ownership. Yes, she created the songs. However, once you sell something to someone else it no longer belongs to you. This includes works of art.

yevster 7y ago

So she’s crying a river over being forced to live up to the obligations of contracts she willingly signed. Most of her fans reading this can only dream of having a fraction of the breaks she’s had or the money she’s made. So she won’t have a documentary about her on Netflix. Neither will anyone reading this, but somehow we’re all supposed to feel sorry or outraged for her?

brazzledazzle 7y ago

Was this flagged by moderators? @dang

minimaxir 7y ago
Given the other comments, it was likely user-flagged.
- brazzledazzle 7y ago
  Weird. Copyright is one of HN’s favorite topics in my experience.

wruza 7y ago

Pretty sure that with such a huge fan base, these guys could appear to sexually harass a couple of acquaintances or more. This is a very unstable situation happening right now, depending on their positions in the business. Maybe it’s better to let the girl sing her songs? Everyone would win.

rambojazz 7y ago

She should try CC-BY-SA.

czottmann 7y ago

Full text, readable away from FB: https://outline.com/https://www.facebook.com/notes/taylor-swift/dont-know-what-else-to-do/10156631338812023/ https://outline.com/https://www.facebook.com/notes/taylor-sw... PSA: I just prepend https://outline.com/ https://outline.com/ to the URL of a FB post to get the actual text (as FB domains are resolved to 0.0.0.0 in my house).

thewinnie 7y ago

isn't she been trying to trademark 22 number? and once we swap sides, will she act differently?

fredsanford 7y ago

Maybe she should talk to John Fogerty...