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Comment by ehosca | Hacker News Reader

does Taylor Swift herself have full autonomy over determining how/when her music can be played?

That is a great question that I'm also curious to hear the answer. She seems to be signed with Universal, how come does she have fine-grained control over her publishing rights unlike most other artists? Or are these actually moves by the labels using her to earn sympathy from the public?

It's pretty likely she was able to negotiate control over her rights that most artists don't have, since she's one of the few remaining artists that actually sells records: http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2014/11/05/361577726/t...

Ultra successful acts like Taylor Swift certainly don't just sign some standard contract the record label gives to them, but negotiate every single clause in it, using extremely competent and experienced managers and lawyers.

That's what distinguishes Taylor Swift from 95 percent of acts who maybe negotiate a little thing here and there, but are mostly happy to get signed.

She seems to be signed with Universal

No, she's signed with an indie label called Big Machine Records. Big Machine Records has a distribution deal with Universal.

I just posted about this at the top level, but thank you for being a critical thinker: Taylor Swift _may_ deal directly with a distributer but only because she's mega-ultra-super successful. 99% of musicians use third parties to get their music to distributors. You do not do deals directly with Spotify: you sign up with ASCAP and tell them the gist of where you want your music.

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