I was inspired by a recent piece in The Economist’s 1843 magazine titled Taylor Made: Think you know the story of how Taylor Swift took on the music industry? The reality is far more complicated. The article lays out Swift’s journey from a talented country-singing teenager to global megastar via that messy bit in the middle – the bit involving a failed attempt to purchase her original masters catalogue from Big Machine Records, the producer of her first six albums.     

‘As Swift grew more successful, she became frustrated that she didn’t own these. Although she got modest royalties from her songs, she wasn’t earning as much as she would if she had owned the masters outright. And she didn’t have full control over how her songs were used.’

What followed was an ugly dispute with Big Machine in their attempt to renegotiate a new contract with Taylor, offering her the opportunity to ‘earn one album back at a time’, inevitably forcing her to walk away, empty-handed, finding a new home with Republic Records (part of Universal Music Group) with far more palatable terms. After a short-lived ceasefire, the issue was reignited once again when Big Machine was sold to Ithaca Holdings, owned by music entrepreneur Scooter Braun, who Taylor did not feel was aligned to her wider creative vision, and was quoted saying ‘not in my worst nightmares’. Cutting a long story short, Taylor has now re-released her own versions for four of those six albums, with fans, or ‘Swifties’, being encouraged to boycott originals and only listen to ‘Taylor’s versions’, making it crystal clear who has the power in the court of public opinion.  

Having engaged with this story across the years, I am admittedly guilty of being swayed by some of the more sensationalist headlines. But the article makes the point that, whilst many musicians have challenged the issue of ownership (Prince, Paul McCartney) or just purchased them back (Rhianna, Dua Lipa), this is just the way things work. No biggie.   

‘This is an odd interpretation. It’s common practice for record companies to own rights. The production of Swift’s early work was a combined effort between the singer and her label, which invested money and time in her when she was relatively unknown.’

I draw so many parallels to the publishing industry where we can observe similar power shifts taking place. For example, the complicated relationship between owner-publisher, creator-author and reader-buyer, and how it evolves with phenomenal commercial success: one taking on the entire financial risk, banking on hypotheticals with no guarantee of return, investing heavily in marketing to attract readers, another emotionally tied to their body of work, labours of love with their name attached, with readers they feel are theirs. Frustrations can be felt financially, but also creatively, and what starts out as the opportunity of a lifetime might start to feel limiting as you seek to diversify.

And whilst just as it is in the music industry, rights ownership is common practice in publishing, it is a bit of a biggie to many of the authors I speak to when they are looking at their options for publishing. ‘Do you own rights?’ is usually one of the first questions asked and the answer is always a ‘No, you own the rights and control the creative direction’. Refreshingly, as a creative publishing agency, Whitefox have a very straightforward relationship dynamic: simply, deliverer-publisher and owner-author. Whitefox exists to empower authors to be more like the Taylors of this world, acting as a publisher, delivering the same industry standards, but with the author at the centre, steering the direction and capitalising on their markets. The reality of this is that the investment, and therefore element of risk, shifts with the power seat, and this often takes a lot of explanation too. When quality in delivery is so important, to get the best, you have to work with (and pay for) the best. As with everything else in this world – from cutting hair to drawing up copyright/IP contracts – you should probably pay for the specialists to do it.     

Excitingly for us, we are seeing so many more examples of creators and brands across music, media and publishing challenging the traditional ways of doing things, or negotiating better terms, and can see a big change on the horizon. Ian Fleming Publications last year decided to publish its own editions of Fleming’s works, enabling them to ‘engage directly with readers and fans’. Keila Shaheen self-published her self-help book, The Shadow Work Journal, which sold almost 700,000 copies through the platform alone via the power of TikTok and by incentivising passionate influencers with a 15 per cent commission. Shaheen is forcing publishers to rethink their model and has since signed a revolutionary five-book publishing deal with Simon & Schuster with a seven-figure advance and a 50-50 profit share. Another example much closer to home is a soon-to-be published Whitefox collaboration with composer and musician Rachel Fuller for a literary and musical reinvention of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, in partnership with Universal Music Group. The project will blend storytelling across music, podcast and a beautifully illustrated graphic novel for a complete sensory experience, pushing the boundaries of creativity.

I wholly recognise the important role publishers play in developing brilliant IP, discovering new talent and building and shaping author careers. The level of investment and risk taken at the beginning of the process, when creators are unknown and unpolished, might be easily forgotten or hidden in the background from fans. Without Big Machine, the likes of Shake It Off or I Knew You Were Trouble might not have become the hits we love (although Taylor famously does write all of her songs), or attracted the millions of Swifties that she benefits from today. She undoubtedly had more bargaining power when she was negotiating terms with Republic – not something every creator will have in their arsenal. However, Taylor is one of many artists and creators putting a luminous orange highlighter on the issue of rights, and also putting pressure on big players to do things differently. Creators clearly want them to rewrite the rulebook. And that might lead to some really cool things. 

In hindsight it would have been far easier for me to write a piece about the many things that Taylor Swift and Whitefox don’t have in common. Whitefox doesn’t have much musical talent or a boyfriend in the NFL. As of today Whitefox doesn’t have global fame, although that is something we are working on. However, on a couple of points they definitely align. Creators should be able to benefit more from owning the rights to their IP, and they are already proving the model is working.