Welcome to “Swiftly Speaking”, a podcast analyzing Taylor Swift’s impact on different aspects of our culture. In this episode, host Reina Subramanian covers Swift’s impact on the music industry. 

Taylor Swift has recently been rerecording all of her albums from her debut album, “Taylor Swift” to her 2017 album, “Reputation.” These rerecordings have been a massive success, with “Red (Taylor’s Version)” breaking the Spotify record for the most single-day streams by a female artist in 2021 and “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” breaking that same record in 2023. 

With this immense success, these rerecordings will inevitably impact the music industry as a whole. Artists like the 2000s band, 98 Degrees, have credited Swift for motivating them to rerecord their old music. 

However, this has a downside. By rerecording her old music, Swift now owns the masters, not the label. By changing the guidelines in their contracts, labels are heavily discouraging new artists from following in Swift’s footsteps which, in turn, robs artists of the right to own their own music.