I still don’t really understand what the hell just happened between Taylor Swift and Big Machine. I do not trust Taylor Swift’s narrative, but I also found Big Machine’s carefully worded narrative very shady. What was it all about in the end? Taylor’s right to perform her Big Machine-era music on the American Music Awards? The rights to that music for her Netflix project? Or was this about something else? Maybe it was Taylor flexing at Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun – “see what I can do, I can just post something on social media and my fans will destroy you and shut down your business and doxx and harass your employees.” All in all, I didn’t think Taylor came out looking that good. But… I think her bullying tactic worked?

The show will go on for Taylor Swift on the “American Music Awards” this Sunday. Following a public dustup concerning permission to perform her older material, whose master rights are owned by Big Machine Label Group, the company (newly owned by Scooter Braun, who purchased it from Scott Borchetta) informed AMAs producers Dick Clark Productions this morning that they have cleared all BMLG artists for performances on the show. The BMLG roster also includes Thomas Rhett, who has been announced to appear on the show.

“The Big Machine Label Group and Dick Clark Productions announce that they have come to terms on a licensing agreement that approves their artists’ performances to stream post show and for re-broadcast on mutually approved platforms,” the company said in a statement. “This includes the upcoming American Music Awards performances. It should be noted that recording artists do not need label approval for live performances on television or any other live media. Record label approval is only needed for contracted artists’ audio and visual recordings and in determining how those works are distributed.”

The detente follows last week’s Swift-Braun-Borchetta flare up involving the sort of music business minutiae that doesn’t commonly interest the general public — the particulars of re-recording old masters. As it relates to the AMAs, an argument could be made that a west coast broadcast of a live show is, technically, a taped version of a song.

[From Variety]

“…They have come to terms on a licensing agreement that approves their artists’ performances to stream post show and for re-broadcast on mutually approved platforms…” Ah. So it wasn’t really about the big bad mean men bullying poor Tay-Tay, it was about corporate lawyers working out what would happen to the live performances, how the performances could be rebroadcast, and one would assume, go online as well. Is it possible that the original argument was more like Big Machine telling Taylor “not yet, we have some sh-t we have to work through with Dick Clark Productions” and Taylor was like “I AM ASSEMBLING THE SNAKE ARMY TO DESTROY YOU”?

Photos courtesy of WENN.