Taylor Swift’s latest re-recording of “1989” is the number one selling album in 2023 — less than a week after its release — and leads the streaming album charts with more than 1.6 million units sold in the U.S. and 3.5 million units globally.
The 33-year-old singer’s re-recorded version of her 2014 album topped the Billboard 200 and she’s made history becoming the first artist to have six number one albums with more than one million units sold domestically, the Hollywood Reporter reported.
Taylor’s Version of “1989” even surpassed the first week of sales of the 2014 version, making it the first of her re-recorded albums to score a bigger debut than the original ones, the outlet noted.
The new “1989” marks the fourth album the “Shake It Off” hitmaker has re-recorded in order to control her master recordings after Scooter Braun bought them from Big Machine Records.
The “Evermore” hitmaker’s success from re-recording her earlier albums has sparked record labels to change contracts to stop performers from ever being able to do the same.
Taylor Swift is on the cover of TIME’s special edition issue! The magazine will cover multiple topics, including The Eras Tour and her re-recordings. #TSTheErasTour pic.twitter.com/v63BlIuVtZ
— The Eras Tour (@TSTheErasTour) November 6, 2023
Labels like Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group, have recently overhauled the contracts they give out to new signees that would make the artists wait 10-30 years before they could re-record releases or never be allowed to after they leave a record company, top attorneys told Billboard magazine.
“The first time I saw it, I tried to get rid of it entirely,” veteran attorney Josh Karp said. “I was just like, ‘What is this? This is strange. Why would we agree to further restrictions than we’ve agreed to in the past with the same label?'”
Previously a contract would state that artists had to wait five to seven years from the release date of the original song, or two years after the contract expired. But now that timeframe has been pushed back much farther.
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“Now, because of all this Taylor Swift s**t, we have an even new negotiation. It’s awful,” music attorney Dina LaPolt told the outlet. “We’re seeing a lot of ‘perpetuity’ s**t, When we were negotiating deals with lawyers, before we would get the proposal, we’d get the phone call from the head of business affairs. We literally would say, ‘If you send that to me, it will be on f***ing Twitter in 10 minutes.’ It never showed up.”
Swift only needs to rerecord two more albums in order to own all her master recordings, her debut 2006 album titled “Taylor Swift” and “Reputation,” which came out a year later.
Related: Taylor Swift Re-Recording Albums Success Sparks Changes To Record Label Contracts