Big Machine Records, every mention

Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version) · Acquired Jan 24, 2022 · 35 mentions

• ▶ 31:20 Ben Gilbert To underscore how much of a chance they were taking on each other, Taylor Swift was Scott's new label, Big Machine's very first client.
• ▶ 31:43 Ben Gilbert And Big Machine.
• ▶ 32:01 David Rosenthal The Swift family invests a 120,000 dollars in Big Machine for a three percent stake in the label.
• ▶ 32:50 David Rosenthal So Toby invests the majority of the money to get it going and big machine does a distribution deal with universal with his former major label for distribution and, uh, they're up and running.
• ▶ 33:05 Ben Gilbert Because history has been so antagonistic between Big Machine and Taylor based on what would end up happening, which we will definitely get to, uh, it is worth underscoring
• ▶ 42:07 unnamed speaker So she and Big Machine, they start making the debut album.
• ▶ 42:23 unnamed speaker Even though she's not on the radio, even though nobody's spending any money here, she also chooses, you know, for the production, again, like Scott and Big Machine, they've got real money, they've got Toby Keith behind them, they've got…
• ▶ 46:23 unnamed speaker Rascal Flats is going to come back into Big Machine later.
• ▶ 1:33:34 David Rosenthal So this was her sixth album, and the last one she was under contract with Big Machine for.
• ▶ 1:33:40 David Rosenthal Taylor does all of Taylor's own stuff, but she doesn't have any issue with Big Machine per se.
• ▶ 1:34:26 David Rosenthal Depending on how things go with Big Machine in this negotiation, she might be able to renegotiate the past split on old albums that she's done if Big Machine is involved going forward.
• ▶ 1:37:11 David Rosenthal So she remember big machine, her label is part of the universal heritage and ecosystem.
• ▶ 1:37:35 David Rosenthal Three, she could leave Big Machine, but stay in the Universal ecosystem and sign with, you know, the parent label itself or one of the other sub labels within Universal.
• ▶ 1:37:46 David Rosenthal And option four is she could stay with Big Machine.
• ▶ 1:37:53 Ben Gilbert She does explore staying with Big Machine.
• ▶ 1:37:58 Ben Gilbert They even publish what looks like some screenshots of legal document
• ▶ 1:38:31 Ben Gilbert Big Machine decided to put out as real, but what we do know is that Big Machine was willing to let her have her masters from the first six albums if she signed with them again, and we don't know what the terms were.
• ▶ 1:38:55 David Rosenthal Big Machine is a country label.
• ▶ 1:39:04 David Rosenthal And, and not only that, but Taylor and Big Machine had been working super closely with Republic to get all of Taylor's songs that when they wanted pop radio play to get on pop radio stations, Republic was the one handling that because…
• ▶ 1:39:45 David Rosenthal This really, really changes the business dynamic for Big Machine.
• ▶ 1:39:55 David Rosenthal It's estimated that revenue from Taylor's work was 80% of Big Machine's total revenue.
• ▶ 1:40:23 David Rosenthal Well, the nature of what this asset is, it really goes from becoming, I think in my view, this is all my interpretation, that 80% of big machines revenue turns from being operating revenue into being like a cash flow streaming asset…
• ▶ 1:41:15 David Rosenthal It changes the nature of what big machine as a company is and specifically turns it into this like
• ▶ 1:41:44 David Rosenthal Well, it's an extended period of time before all the drama and all the beef and everything comes out around big machine and the masters.
• ▶ 1:41:59 David Rosenthal It now becomes pretty clear that like big machine is now a securitizable asset essentially, and probably should be sold.
• ▶ 1:42:07 David Rosenthal Scott Porchetta could hang on to it and keep the royalties associated from the old TSWF masters, but like, there's not that much else going on at big machine as a label.
• ▶ 1:42:27 David Rosenthal The reason I think this is now becomes a separate phase of the negotiations is because had Taylor made a different decision and stayed with Big Machine, either fully or in some form, all these dynamics would be different.
• ▶ 1:43:17 David Rosenthal Either Big Machine itself or the masters, which were the majority of the value of Big Machine.
• ▶ 1:43:58 David Rosenthal She claims that she was never offered the chance to outright buy either Big Machine or the masters themselves.
• ▶ 1:44:06 Ben Gilbert Which is, of course, fascinating, because the owners, and you can see this on the Secretary of State website for the state of Tennessee of Big Machine Records LLC, there are only five members in this LLC.
• ▶ 1:44:53 Ben Gilbert But it is crazy that the Swift family is one of five shareholders of Big Machine
• ▶ 1:45:03 David Rosenthal Taylor even says that she knew that once she went somewhere else, it was obvious that Big Machine was gonna get sold.
• ▶ 1:52:03 David Rosenthal Irony of ironies, Ithaca and Scooter and Big Machine sells the asset of the masters of the first six albums.
• ▶ 1:52:15 David Rosenthal Big Machine, the operating company, all the other masters of other artists, they have everything that stays with Ithaca Holdings.
• ▶ 1:52:28 David Rosenthal So about the same price that they paid for all of Big Machine a year earlier.