Taylor Swift’s rise to the top of the music industry has not been without controversy. A dispute with her old record label could have derailed the singer’s career—but instead, she used it to propel herself to superstardom. In the second of two special episodes from August 2024, “Money Talks” host Alice Fulwood gets the inside story of the battle to acquire the rights to Swift’s first six albums. Then she finds out how the artist used the story of the dispute to remake the music industry to her advantage.

Hosts: Alice Fulwood, Tom Lee-Devlin and Mike Bird. Guests: Tim Ingham, the founder of Music Business Worldwide; Kristelia García of the Georgetown University Law Center; Michael Schill of the Darden School of Business; and Bill Werde, former editorial director of Billboard magazine, current director of the Bandier Program at Syracuse University and author of the “Full Rate No Cap” newsletter.

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