taylor swift iridescent smoke bombs thread 2019 - lover

i assume you'll get the answer to these questions by posting the same thing over and over again on a message board

Well, the end result of this conflict will only be decided by looking at the contract with lawyers, so absolutely nothing else matters. Did she sign the contract (and more specifically, what does the contract say she can do) is the entire point of this thing.

― brotherlovesdub, Friday, November 15, 2019 3:34 PM (seven minutes ago)

the thing about this point you keep repeating over and over is that isn't even necessarily true. social pressure is very powerful

So you think in lieu of having legal footing to support her, Taylor is correct in rallying her fans to pressure the company to release her from her contract? I agree social pressure is powerful. It's also dangerous. If she can get out of a bad contract by getting Twitter angry, then more power to her. Hopefully nobody dies over some Taylor Swift royalties.

yeah if she can leverage her power by applying public pressure to scooter braun & scott borchetta in order to extract what she wants i don't have a problem with that. you think they wouldn't do the same? and is that less moral than chaining an artist to a contract they signed as a teenager?

the arguments itt in favor of executives trying to fuck over an artist are

1. think of the record company employees children
2. she should put her energy into doing something like curing cancer
3. the record company gave its employees the day off
4. a taylor swift stan might kill somebody

Yeah Taylor is going about unleashing her stans in a kind of iffy way, but lol @ the folks itt suddenly concerned about the sanctity of record label contracts.

I'm sure there's never, ever been a case in the entire history of the music business where the terms of a contract are being interpreted in wildly different ways by the artist and the label. I'm guessing she's hoping public pressure might help more quickly than waiting for drawn out legal battle.

xp the arguments itt in favor of executives trying to fuck over an artist are

No, they're arguments against the paragraph in Taylor's tweet that begins "Please let Scott Borchetta..." (or at least 1, 3, and 4; I don't rep for pt. 2)

Ftr, it sounds like these guys are indeed being total dicks (and their slippery statement only seems to reinforce that), and if Taylor had tweeted her complaint w/out that paragraph I'd have no problem w/it

But unleashing toxic stans does not seem cool to me

she's unleashing her stans on very powerful people. this is part of the game they are willingly playing.

I am not a fan of Taylor Swift in the slightest but I do think this is one of the few scenarios where I not only am okay with a megafamous person unleashing her fans upon someone but actively support it.

it's very sad that scooter braun had to turn off comments on his instagram

xxp I disagree - the other artists managed by Braun aren't part of this game (nor are employees of "The Carlyle Group," to circle back to the oddest sentence of her tweet). And look, I don't want to be alarmist, I don't think anyone's actually going to be harmed over this (or I sure hope not). But she knew exactly what she was doing when she wrote "Please ask them for help..."

At the very least, she is now an artist who can never complain about toxic standom, b/c she's using it as a tool in a dispute.

scooter braun's wealth can be traced directly back to his cultivation and harnessing of an enormous stan culture around justin bieber. how that culture has affected bieber has not frequently appeared to matter much to scooter braun, who dragged bieber around the world on the purpose tour even as bieber was openly recoiling from his audience onstage every night. the idea that it's some grave injustice for stan culture to be weaponized against scooter braun is hilarious.

And this is not like some stupid Twitter dispute over a shitty comment somebody made in an interview or something, this is a musician being told she can't perform literally 95% of the music she has written since she was 16.

But, by all means, folks can ride or die for their man Scooter Braun.

tbf if Scooter Braun got rich by torturing Justin Bieber, I now have much more positive feelings towards Scooter Braun

Think of the layers of turpitude in a man named "Scooter."

xxxxp She didn't just weaponize it against Braun, but I guess you're committed to that idea.

im sorry that i don't buy that taylor swift stans are watching big machine employees thru sniper scopes

Her tweet didn’t mention them.

Taylor Swift is worth the best part of four hundred million dollars, with plenty more assuredly to come over the remainder of what will be a long career. Why are we meant to give a flying shit about any of this?

well i'm now reminded that the american music awards still exist

I learned that the Alibaba 11.11 Global Shopping Festival exists

Taylor Swift is worth the best part of four hundred million dollars, with plenty more assuredly to come over the remainder of what will be a long career. Why are we meant to give a flying shit about any of this?

― does it look like i'm here (jon123), Friday, November 15, 2019

Thanks for reading the update.

the carlyle group sentence is there because the carlyle group helped finance the buyout

The buyout is done. What involvement do they have in Big Machine’s business practices now?

please... think of the carlyle group

Can you answer the question?

(All I said was it was odd; if it turns out there’s a way they could “help” her then I’m wrong.)

nobody except a very small number of people knows what any of these contracts stipulate... it doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination to come up w/ reasons why she would think that applying social pressure to the carlyle group would help her. and even if she's wrong i'm not going to cry for uh "one of the world's largest and most successful investment firms with $212 billion of assets"

I guess. Wikipedia also says they have “more than 1,575 employees in 31 offices on six continents.” But you’ve made clear that think the idea of safety threats here is trivial, and I doubt anything bad will happen either. I still think her “call to action” paragraph was not aimed at rallying “social pressure” in to help her case (the rest of the statement and accompanying publicity would have done that), but was purely meant to be retaliatory/threatening. I do hope things work out for her.

Sorry that got mangled. You get my drift. She could have released the main part of the statement, and gotten the same widespread support that she got the first time. The additional “pressure” she’s added doesn’t seem likely to force anyone’s hand, but we’ll see

The idea that if you sign a contract, then it doesn't matter what happens to you, you only get what you signed up for, is really odd and inconsiderate. But the other idea that if you work for a big company, then it doesn't matter what happens to you, you only get what you signed up for, isn't much better.

Whatever we think of it, it is something new, no? Explicitly sending fans after enemies, and even other artists associated with those enemies, I can't remember seeing that before?

How is this not 100% unacceptable and 100% on Taylor?

https://www.etonline.com/big-machine-records-offices-shut-down-due-to-threats-amid-taylor-swift-feud-136467?amp&__twitter_impression=true

remember m.i.a. posting lynn hirschberg's phone number on twitter after trufflegate? lol xp

the reason some -- myself among them, admittedly -- find it difficult to particularly care about the specific injustice faced by taylor swift at the hands of the music industry is that she currently enjoys very nearly the greatest outcome possible for an artist caught in the midst of this exploitive system.

i'm sometimes tempted to laugh when people wonder if a music 'industry' as we know it -- with artists + songs winning hearts, capturing attention and constellating imaginations nation- or even worldwide -- could even exist without some measure of the deeply predatory capitalist pigshit endemic to the system. but it's not an absurd question, as the industry has never existed without it and in fact may never be without it until it ceases to be a profit-extracting enterprise at all.

the industry has always thrived, in large part, on the willingness of young creatives -- many of whom are women, non-white, or both -- to agree to cede a suffocating amount of control over their output to old (frequently white, frequently male) bean-counters without a creative bone in their body whose work consists largely of schmoozing with other powerful folks or placing bets on the expiration dates of their signees. 'willingness' may be an insensitive or inaccurate word to use, as artists often feel they have no choice at all but to fall in line, at least for the moment, in exchange for a real shot at being heard by a mass audience. the artist's dream is to defy the presumed expiration date, to prove her worth (culturally in one sense, but financially at the end of the day) to such an undeniable extent that the machine's parts will begin to refashion themselves to keep her afloat rather than to push her out as soon as she starts showing weakness, so convinced of her perpetual relevance. one day, the industry may work for me, not against me.

the vast majority never come even remotely close to attaining that dream. taylor swift has.

of the seven singles swift has solicited to top 40 radio over the course of the past two album cycles, six have underperformed, and badly, from an airplay/exposure perspective, i.e. what the bigwigs at labels and radio care about (as opposed to short-lived billboard peaks that stans like to retweet). (if you're wondering, the one exception was "delicate."). in that count, i do include current single "lover," which appears to be nearly out of steam despite the recent release of its remix with shawn mendes.

an artist who's thoroughly plugged into the machinery but still chasing the dream these days could have two, maybe three such underperformers in succession before important folks stop returning their calls, a-list producers are suddenly no longer in reach for the next project, programming directors stop eagerly scooping them into their playlists, etc. and plans for a subsequent full-length release go on hold. such is not the case for taylor swift, who has enjoyed the privilege of having each and every one of her underperformers rocket up pop radio playlists with alarming urgency -- at least, until it became clear that listeners weren't biting and the songs were then promptly dropped like hot potatoes.

though some players, including scooter braun, certainly aren't, the industry as a whole is still working very hard on taylor swift's behalf. this is why, despite buzzfeed thinkpieces essaying to explain why we should all care and #StandWithTaylor, despite aoc and elizabeth warren hoping to use the news to help direct some public ire toward private equity firms, so many of us simply cannot bring ourselves to care one way or another.

we can recognize that at the heart of the situation is an injustice perpetrated on the (relatively) vulnerable on behalf of the (relatively) greedy. taylor swift is accurate when she frames her own struggle as one commonly shared by many artists, particularly women, caught up in this system. however, given the immense privilege she currently enjoys within that same system, it's fair for critics to wonder to what extent any corrective to her particular situation would apply to those not as firmly at the center of the industry. if the status quo fails to change for anyone else, then was the change itself meaningful? does framing the struggle as one made on behalf of all young artists, or all women artists, ring a bit hollow?

i don't know. but congrats to abc, who should now be able to crank up the prices on ads surrounding taylor swift's performance slot on the ama's, regardless of whether anything noteworthy or good happens in said performance whatsoever. be sure to tune in sunday, november 24th at 8/7c.

What a post! But is top 40 chart performance really so important for an artist of her (rarefied) stature — isn’t her proven & consistent ability to sell tons of albums and concert tickets the reason her calls are returned, etc.?

But is top 40 chart performance really so important for an artist of her (rarefied) stature — isn’t her proven & consistent ability to sell tons of albums and concert tickets the reason her calls are returned, etc.?

Unsuccessful singles are the first dominoes to fall. Next, the albums stop selling. (This has already happened - 1989 was 9x platinum in the US, Reputation was 3x platinum, Lover is "only" platinum.) Eventually, the concerts stop selling out.

Love to write thousand word posts on things I don’t care about one way or the other

Eventually, the concerts stop selling out.

Trying to think of any pop stars of the past 10+ years that can no longer pack the venues they previously filled, but I'm coming up short. People might not buy the new album(s), but fans still flock to big shows.

i find the brouhaha interesting even if i don't particularly mind how the situation at the center of it resolves. touché tho

xp katy perry? idk, i don't pay a lot of attention to the touring business

Trying to think of any pop stars of the past 10+ years that can no longer pack the venues they previously filled, but I'm coming up short.

Nicki Minaj cancelled an entire tour because the tickets weren't selling IIRC.

i'd like to salute the brave men & women who are protecting america from taylor swift's music. god is smiling upon us!

A recent article mentioned that this guy is Swift’s attorney, representing her in the negotiations w/Big Machine. I’d love to be a fly on the wall...

Great post, dyl.

dyl, my only fault with your post is "creatives" is as a noun :)

Idk when 16 year old Taylor signed the contract I doubt she ever envisioned a day when Big Machine would tell her she wasn’t allowed to play her own songs, just as I’m sure Big Machine never envisioned that in 2019 Taylor would be able to mobilize a fan army and besiege their office and threaten the world economy by taking down the Carlyle Group.

Big Machine is still maintaining they’re not trying to stop her from performing any songs from her catalog on the AMAs, and pointing out that they would have no legal right to do so.