Taylor Swift opened up on the New Heights podcast with Travis and Jason Kelce, and honestly, it got heavy. She didn’t sugarcoat anything about what it felt like when her masters were sold off.
“It ripped my heart out of my chest,” she said, voice all shaky and eyes welling up. It’s wild—most people don’t even realize artists usually don’t own their own master recordings. She paused a few times, trying to pull herself together, but you could tell how much it still stings.
Taylor Swift gets emotional
She explained why owning her masters mattered so much to her. “If I never bought back my music, one day someone else would be leaving it to their kids in their will.” That’s a gut punch right there. The idea that her life’s work could just be passed around like some collectible? No way she was letting that slide.
Taylor Swift gets emotional while talking about buying her masters back on the New Heights podcast.pic.twitter.com/WrmMa0rVTG
— Pop Base (@PopBase) August 13, 2025
She remembered exactly how she felt back in June 2019the first time her masters got sold. She said she thought about not owning her songs every single day. The pain was so real she started re-recording everything, basically out of pure defiance. There was no other way for her to take control.
Taylor Swift recalls the master’s controversy
Taylor broke it down: record labels have the rights unless you buy them back. She’d been saving up since she was a teenager, hoping for the chance.
Then Big Machine Records sold her catalog to Scooter Braun in 2019. The next year, Braun sold them again, this time to Shamrock Capital. It wasn’t until May 2025 that Taylor finally owned her music outright.
The singer shared a personal moment—how she rushed to tell Travis Kelce the news the minute her mom called her. She was crying, barely holding it together, and burst in on Travis while he was gaming.
The Grammy-winning artist tried to say it all calm, but just ended up sobbing, “I got all my music back.” Travis remembered her as “dead weight,” saying she literally dropped to the floor, overwhelmed. Taylor admitted she just collapsed—her body gave out from all the emotion.
