taylor swift iridescent smoke bombs thread 2019 - lover

'All recording artists should own their masters' is a perfectly reasonable stance, regardless of who said recording artist happens to be.

i'm not arguing that she's special! and "that's just the way it is" seems more like a bruce hornsby song than a counterargument

She's only special insofar as she has more money/power to leverage than the overwhelming majority of singers/musicians. While that does make her insufferable on some level, I'm glad she's using her privilege for a good cause, even if she has something to gain in the process.

To be fair, the offer Swift claimed Big Machine offered her (the 'one for one' deal) was straight garbage.

hmm. should David Attenborough own the rights to Blue Planet II?

The fight to own masters is nothing new, people have been fighting this fight for a century. It is definitely not reasonable imo for a label, a business partner, to just give the masters back to the artist when they ask. They deserve some sort of compensation, don't they? The irony here is that Big Machine was the small indie, made huge by her success. She left for an even bigger major label, and we know how much they care about masters. I mean, we're not talking about Swift fighting with Greg Ginn and SST here.

The offer Swift claims Big Machine made may have been garbage, or maybe it was never made. These people all lie, all the time, especially when there are millions of dollars to be made.

The fact that it's nothing new doesn't make it any less significant imho. I understand your cynicism (and I frankly dislike TS's music, to boot), but if small steps are to be potentially made here, I'm all for it.

But she's not leading some artists rights charge is she? She just wants her masters back so she can have more power and make more money. How does that help anybody else?

The media is making it into a narrative about Taylor wanting to own the masters (which she does want obv) when, if you read the Tumblr post, it is clearly about Scooter owning said masters

"When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them."

And she has a right to be upset. But corporate properties change hands all the time. she should have just partnered up with someone and bought big machine herself.

How does that help anybody else?

If it can create a precedent and draw further attention to the issue, that's good enough in my book.

I think back to Prince's battle with Warner Bros. Why did he re-sign with Warner Brothers in the first place? Because they gave him a shit ton of money. Ironically, with Prince, when he was releasing music himself he kind of did a shitty job of it.

But corporate properties change hands all the time. she should have just partnered up with someone and bought big machine herself.

yes, if only Taylor could've seen into the future at that time and saw that her life's work thus far would be sold to Scooter Braun

Is Braun a known bad guy? The little I had read about him before this mention anything particularly negative... (tho someone upthread mentioned an unflattering New Yorker profile that I wasn't aware of).

*"didn't mention anything..."

Even the New Yorker profile wasn't that unfattering. But again, what difference does it make that she doesn't like the guy? Whoever gets to make those decisions? I'm at peace with you selling my masters ... except to Scooter Braun! There is definitely more to this story, more we don't know. It's weird that she made that Tumblr post in the first place, coming out guns blazing, and then going silent. Doesn't she often stir up attention getting controversies before each album release?

I mean the post does literally end with a "call to action" to buy her new album.

Nihilistic hot take: the way it's framed in the media™ is just as important as what's 'actually' going on.

'All recording artists should own their masters' is a perfectly reasonable stance, regardless of who said recording artist happens to be.

There's a very easy* way to make sure you own your masters: FUND THE PROJECT YOURSELF, IN FULL, FROM BEGINNING TO END. "Hey, Giant Corporation - I want you to loan me a bunch of money to record, market, and promote an album...but I want to own it outright afterward" is not a perfectly reasonable stance, regardless of which giant corporation it happens to be.

*not actually easy at all

There's a very easy*

I do agree that it's rich (pun intended) coming from her, as she could have indeed funded herself (or rather her father could have funded her) from the get-go. It's just that a public scandal microscopically increases the likelihood that this very real issue will be discussed and debated in terms that have an infinitesimal (and I wish to stress this) chance of maybe (although probably not) changing something. (I don't know what's wrong with me, I want to be vaguely optimistic about this for once.)

She should pull a Fogerty and just refuse to play any of those Big Machine songs.

I was wondering if she'll record a "Zanz(/Vanz) Kant Danz" type song.

Most of her songs are like that.

i think this might become an inflection point in a post-me too world about the rights of women in the music industry and the way contracts in the pop/major label world are designed. if anything it will at least have raised some level of awareness for artists who are unsigned going forward.... of course that's a pretty small slice of the industry, and would do nothing to address i.e. the myriad number of rappers who get signed to deals by shady dudes when they're 15 or whatever before they even get approached by majors in the first place

What does this have to do with the rights of women specifically?

Does Jay Z own all his masters? For some reason I think he does. If so, how did he pull that off? Does Beyonce own her masters? She might!

if you can't see the fault lines this discussion is breaking along, you're very dense

by "this discussion" i mean about taylor and scooter in broader society, not the one happening specifically in this thread

A summary of "unfollows," etc.: https://hollywoodlife.com/2019/07/01/taylor-swift-blocks-justin-bieber-demi-lovato-spotify/

"Kacey is also taking major heat from Tay and her Swifties after she hit the like button on Scooter’s wife’s post defending him."

xpost I guess I am just very dense. This all seems like a mess of rich people feuding in public about petty grade-school bullshit.

The news comes from the ‘Taylor Swift Spotify’ Twitter account, which claims to ‘pull data using Spotify’s Web-API to identify’ Taylor’s Spotify account activity.

Not creepy at all!

Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez, Adele, and Gwen Stefani have all have reportedly unfollowed Scooter on social media after his acquisition of Taylor’s life’s work. Even his own client, Ariana Grande, deleted her Instagram story congratulating Scooter on the purchase after seeing Tayor’s message. Halsey wrote a lengthy tweet describing how Taylor was the inspiration behind why she writes all of her own music and ended with “I am standing with her” with a broken heart emoji.

I mean, just reading that is kind of ridiculous. Unfollowed on social media! A lengthy tweet! This is truly the worst, stupidest era of everything.

the media's focus is often not on the core issues because the core issues are a bit more complex and less trashy

anyway Jordan otm i think, also the fact is women are disproportionately affected by the way major label artists are dealt with largely because there's little representation of women within the industry, so there are fewer people to advocate for them. i'm not sure if this is what he was getting at but there's that too.

Is Braun a known bad guy? The little I had read about him before this mention anything particularly negative... (tho someone upthread mentioned an unflattering New Yorker profile that I wasn't aware of).

― stan by me (morrisp), Tuesday, July 2, 2019 12:53 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is what I was wondering, besides that tweet about k-pop fans I haven't heard anything

assuming the kpop thing is just his mismanagement of CL's western pop career, or something related

Like if you read Justin Bieber's bro-ish, culty Instagram post ("One thing i know is both scooter and i love you (...) Neither scooter or i have anything negative to say about you we truly want the best for you."), he (Bieb) seems to take all responsibility for taunting Taylor with that screenshot; and it does seem kind of bizarre to think that a biz guy like Braun would personally get involved in something like that? But these are all bizarre people, so who knows.

what i was saying is that, generally speaking, i think the kinds of pop artists who sign deals as young artists -- taylor references the deal being signed when she was 15 -- are women, and obv we're currently in a time where the treatment of women by powerful men is a major topic of discussion in both culture & politics. taylor's framing of the story -- whether it's accurate or not -- is framed along those lines. to me that is pretty obvious... i guess the men on the big machine side of the story (and they are principally men) might call it cynical, but we've already seen a lot of major women pop stars take taylor's side, either on the issue of scooter specifically or on the subject of who owns art and the position women artists are put in by labels at a young age (i.e. sky ferreira) more generally. i posted that excerpt of the hollywood life blog to illustrate which people are even tacitly taking taylor's side: "Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez, Adele, and Gwen Stefani" etc. the sexual and emotional abuse alleged in the kesha vs dr luke battle is what got most of the headlines, but at its heart -- or legally at least -- it was about a woman who had signed a legal but almost certainly predatory contract with an older man, who had mostly kept the profits from that music for himself. so when i said that i think this could be an inflection point for the rights of women in the music industry, that's what i was talking about.

Like if you read Justin Bieber's bro-ish, culty Instagram post ("One thing i know is both scooter and i love you (...) Neither scooter or i have anything negative to say about you we truly want the best for you."), he (Bieb) seems to take all responsibility for taunting Taylor with that screenshot; and it does seem kind of bizarre to think that a biz guy like Braun would personally get involved in something like that? But these are all bizarre people, so who knows.

― stan by me (morrisp), Tuesday, July 2, 2019 4:05 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

it's hard to tell for her post whether taylor's claim of being bullied by scooter relates back only to that one instagram post -- because it's pretty easy to believe that he didn't know it was going to be used to taunt her -- or if there's other stuff she didn't want to bring up.

Depends if you see Kanye and his manager bullying her with the "Famous" video.

(Let alone the "Famous" lyrics themselves.)

the timeline of when scooter was reported to have taken on kanye and when the "famous" video came out is just in this specific time frame where you could easily argue that he would've known, or that he wouldn't have or wasn't formally managing him yet

Looks like he was managing Kanye by May 2016 and the video with a deepfake naked Taylor Swift dropped in July 2016, and the taunting “Taylor Swift what up” Instagram post from the bros was posted on August 2.

That was some bullshit, but does every pop star taking a shot at another pop star constitute bullying? I dunno. In her case that implies she was in some vulnerable, weaker position of power, which she most certainly was not. She may have been mad, and rightly so, but I don't see how she was bullied. If you are one of the most famous and successful people in the entire world and you are upset that Kim Kardashian called you a name, you really need to prioritize your outrage.

They showed a nude Swift lookalike taking part in a big group sex thing w/Kanye & Kim in the video

Yeah, that was fucked up. But I don't think it's bullying. And I think reflected more poorly on Kanye et al. than it affected Taylor.