On June 30, 2019, Scooter Braun's company Ithaca Holdings announced that it had acquired Big Machine Label Group, the Nashville label founded by Scott Borchetta that had released Taylor Swift's first six studio albums. According to Music Business Worldwide, the total price was $330 million, $300 million for the label and $30 million for its publishing, and Swift's six albums of master recordings were valued internally at $140 million. Swift had left the label in 2018 to sign with Republic Records and Universal Music Group.

The same day, Swift published a post on Tumblr calling the sale her worst case scenario and accusing Braun of what she called incessant, manipulative bullying. She said she had tried for years to buy her own recordings. The dispute grew in November 2019, when she said Braun and Borchetta were putting her performance of older songs at the American Music Awards in jeopardy, as told in Artist of Decade.

In August 2019, Swift announced she would rerecord her first six albums so that she would own new versions of them. In November 2020, Ithaca sold the original masters to the investment firm Shamrock Capital for $360 million up front plus a $45 million earn out, a total of $405 million.

The rerecordings, released under the name "Taylor's Version" with previously unreleased songs from the vault, began with Fearless (Taylor's Version) in April 2021 and continued with Red (Taylor's Version) in November 2021, Speak Now (Taylor's Version) in July 2023 and 1989 (Taylor's Version) in October 2023. Red (Taylor's Version) included the ten minute "All Too Well," the basis of her directing debut.

On May 30, 2025, Swift announced in a letter on her website that she had bought back her masters from Shamrock Capital, along with her music videos, concert films, album art, photography and unreleased songs. She wrote that all of the music she had ever made now belonged to her, and she credited the rerecordings and the success of the Eras Tour for making the purchase possible.

The dispute became one of the most discussed cases of artist ownership in modern music, and it led many younger performers to look closely at who owns their recordings. Swift's first album released after the purchase was The Life of a Showgirl in October 2025. The recordings in question reached back to her first record deal with Big Machine in 2005.