Taylor Swift Knows She’s 'Loud' About Artists’ Rights: 'It’s Because Someone Has to Be'

Taylor Swift won’t “calm down” when it comes to advocating for artists’ rights.

In an interview with Billboard, which named the star their “Artist of the Decade,” Swift opened up about why she has spoken up for artists, whether to fight against unfair payouts from streaming services or to raise awareness about terms of record deals, throughout the years.

“New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise — but if I can, then I’m going to,” Swift, 29, said. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this, but it’s because someone has to be.”

Between 2014 and 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates for artists. Then in 2015, Swift wrote a letter criticizing Apple Music ahead of its launch for its plan to not pay royalties during listeners’ three-month free trial period. Within just 24 hours, the company announced a new policy.

In recent months, Swift’s ongoing feud with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the music manager whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, has played out in public.

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After news that Braun had acquired her music catalog in a $300 million sale in June, Swift expressed her frustration in a Tumblr post in which she accused Braun of being a bully and said it was her “worst case scenario” that he was the one who now owned her masters.

“I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system,” Swift told Billboard. “We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about recalibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers.”

“We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it,” she continued. “When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, ‘Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?'”

During the Billboard interview, Swift maintained that she was not given an opportunity to buy her masters outright.

“I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it,” she said. “I want to at least raise my hand and say, ‘This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal — not as a renegotiation ploy — and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.’

“God, I would have paid so much for them!” she added. “Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me.”

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Swift went on to say that she’s thankful there’s “power in writing your music.”

“Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use ‘Shake It Off‘ in some advertisement or ‘Blank Space‘ in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them,” she said. “And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.”

Swift has previously said she plans to rerecord her first six albums next year, when she is contractually able to.

“It’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine,” she said. “When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.”

Since she’s been so outspoken about what she believes is right throughout her career, Swift said she’ll get calls from new artists asking for her help.

“I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be,” she said. “And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue — like, ‘Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?’ And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.”

Though Swift said she didn’t really have someone like herself to reach out to in the beginning of her career, she had “so many mentors in country music,” including Faith Hill.

“Faith Hill was wonderful,” she said. “She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her.”

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When she crossed over from country to pop, though, she said it was “a completely different world.”

“Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much,” she said. “Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop — we all have each other’s numbers and text each other — but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.”

As to whether she would ever want to start her own record label and sign artists, Swift said she does think about “every once in a while.”

“But if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy,” she explained. “I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.”

Despite nearly 15 years of success, Swift said she’s still “always trying to learn.”

“I’m learning from everyone,” she said. “I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, ‘That’s really cool.’ You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that.”

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Swift said that while working with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the upcoming Cats film based on his music, he would walk through the door and say, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!”

“And I’m like, ‘You are it! You are it!'” she said, “Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote ‘the kids are doing’ and roll your eyes. You have to learn.”

Swift admitted that she has only seen TikTok videos when they’re posted to Tumblr, but she loves them.

“I think that they’re hilarious and amazing,” she said. “Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, ‘Any way we can do that is good.'”

Swift will soon celebrate her 30th birthday on Dec. 13 — and as she heads into a new decade, she’s feeling extra focused.

“I’ve spent a lot of time recalibrating my life to make it feel manageable,” she said. “Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade.”

“I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe,” she continued. “And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.”

Still, Swift finds ways to connect to her fans online, namely through her Tumblr page.

“Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent,” she said. “We can kid around — they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe.”

Swift said there are some times when she opens Twitter that she just gets “so overwhelmed” that she “immediately” closes it.

“I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news,” she said. “Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.”

When asked what advice she would give herself if she could go back in time, Swift said she “wouldn’t” give herself any.

“I would have done everything exactly the same way,” she said. “Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but … I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend [actor Joe Alwyn]. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.”

Next, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a to-be-announced lineup of artists.