Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, I was going to ask, is that normal? I think so. It actually used to be more. It's like 8 to 10, but it's come down in recent years. This was her sixth album and the last one she was under contract with Big Machine for. Taylor does all of Taylor's own stuff, but she doesn't have any issue with Big Machine per se. There's no bad blood there, but the industry is like, well, this is going to be a big moment. A Variety article from around the time comes out that lays out what they see as Taylor's four options for what to do going forward now that this deal is expiring. They note that probably the most important factor in her decision is going to be the master licenses certainly for future albums that she'll make. She's not going to take a 10% to 15% cut going forward, but they suggest, say people in the industry are saying, that Taylor is such a big star that 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. They say, there are probably four options here. One, Taylor actually genuinely could just ditch labels altogether and go run this whole thing herself. I think the bigger reason she and other people don't do this is if you do go this path, you essentially have to build a whole full stack company around yourself, and that takes a lot of time and energy. If you are an artist and the primary thing you do is create and make music, that's a distraction and time away from that.…

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