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A row involving Taylor Swift, her former record label and a couple of big name US politicians looks like it’s coming to an end.
The group that owns most of her music, Big Machine, says she will be allowed to play her old tracks at the American Music Awards on Sunday.
Swift got high profile support last week, after accusing them of trying to stop her performing her back catalogue.
But the company says she didn’t need their permission in the first place.
Taylor Swift’s first six albums were released through Big Machine, which was bought out by a company owned by talent manager Scooter Braun earlier this year.
In a Tumblr post at the time she described this as the “worst case scenario” and accused him of years of “incessant, manipulative bullying”.
Braun has worked with the likes of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian – both of whom Taylor Swift has had feuds with in the past.
He has consistently denied being unfair to her.
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Scooter Braun has managed Justin Bieber, among others, throughout his career in music
Then, last week, Taylor Swift posted on Twitter accusing Big Machine of trying to stop her performing tracks from her first six albums at the AMAs.
She claimed the label thought the performance would amount to a re-recording.
“I just want to be able to perform my own music,” she said.
“That’s it. I’ve tried to work this out privately through my team but have not been able to resolve anything.”
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Taylor Swift’s seventh album, Lover, is the only one she owns the rights to
She also accused Big Machine of holding back permission to use any music in an upcoming Netflix documentary about her life.
Her post got the attention of two big-name Democratic politicians: Senator Elizabeth Warren and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
They criticised Scooter Braun’s company and the effect big businesses can have when they buy up smaller ones.
Private equity groups’ predatory practices actively hurt millions of Americans.
Their leveraged buyouts have destroyed the lives of retail workers across the country, scrapping 1+ million jobs. Now they’re holding @taylorswift13’s own music hostage.
They need to be reigned in. https://t.co/mSVeH718Hn
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 15, 2019
End of Twitter post by @AOC
Big Machine have twice denied doing anything wrong.
“At no point did we say Taylor could not perform on the AMAs or block her Netflix special,” they said in a statement on their website last Friday.
“In fact, we do not have the right to keep her from performing live anywhere.”
Now they’ve put out another statement – directly to the organisers of the AMAs.
“[We] have agreed to grant all licenses of [our] artists’ performances to stream post show and for re-broadcast on mutually agreed platforms,” it says.
“It should be noted that recording artists do not need label approval for live performances on television or any other live event.”
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