Whether you like her bubble gum pop and her rowdy girl style, you have to recognize American star Taylor Swift's courage when it comes to combating the abusive practices of the record industry and make his voice heard.
In 2014, she embarked on a fierce battle with Apple and the streaming giant Spotify and removed for three years his songs from the platform (they are available again since 2017).
In October 2018, in the midst of campaigning for the mid-term US parliamentary elections, she called to vote for the Democratic candidate for Tennessee (where she lives) and defended LGBT and minority rights, risking a backlash of his fanbase conservative.
"Predatory practices"
Last week, it is to defend its rights that the 29-year-old singer is once again on the rise, reviving an argument started in June, when Ithaca, the company of the very powerful manager and producer Scooter Braun (who chairs also for the discographical destinies of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande or Kanye West), bought for 300 million dollars (272 million euros) Big Machine, the label producer of the first six albums of Taylor Swift. Sold to nearly 50 million copies, and full of tubes (from Shake It Off at I Knew You Were Trouble), disks represent a huge and continual source of revenue in broadcast rights.
On November 15, the pop star, who had already expressed this summer his dismay at this new situation completely beyond his control, took the keyboard to expose this conflict to his 123 million Instagram subscribers (and 85 million followers on Twitter).
The water drop ? Scooter Braun and his former label would have tried to stop him from singing a medley of his old songs (which they own) at the American Music Awards on November 24th.
In her message, posted jointly on all her social networks, she called in particular for help Carlyle Group, the private investment company that orchestrated the sale that dispossessed songs she composed and recorded between 2006 and 2017 (her last album, Lover released in August and has already sold two million copies, was released under the label Universal Music).
By thus publicly attacking big capital, Taylor Swift has pinpointed a hot debate in the middle of the campaign for the Democratic primary. On November 15, Progressive Camp Star MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed her support on Twitter: "The predatory practices of private equity firms hurt millions of Americans. (…) Today they are taking @ TaylorSwift13's music hostage. They must be regulated. "
