American singer Taylor Swift has signed a new global recording agreement with Universal Music Group.
Swift has announced that she is leaving her lifelong record label, Big Machine Label Group (BMLG), to sign with Republic Records and Universal Music Group (UMG). The financial terms of the deal have not been made public.
The 28-year-old pop superstar has put pen to paper on a multi-year agreement which will see Universal (UMG) act as the exclusive worldwide recorded music partner for Swift, whilst UMG’s Republic Records will serve as her label partner in America.
Announcing the news in an Instagram post to her 113M followers, the “Trouble” singer wrote:
An interesting condition of the deal is that Taylor insisted that should Universal sell any of its shares in Spotify it will “result in a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable”.
This follows Taylor’s stance against Apple Music, which prompted the company to change its policy not to pay royalties to artists or labels during its initial three-month free trial period. The singer/songwriter also previously refused to allow streaming services such as Spotify to host her music in a protest about the level of royalty payments for musicians but she did allow her songs to be streamed from June 2017.
Swift’s Reputation World Tour concludes in Tokyo, Japan this week. She will play two shows at the Tokyo Dome on 20 and 21 November. Reputation sold 1.9m units in 2017, making it the No 1 album of the year in pure sales terms, and No 3 in album-equivalent streams.
