The biggest radio group in the US has announced that it will only play Taylor Swift’s re-recorded songs on their stations from now on.
iHeart - which owns over 860 stations - will only play the music that the 31-year-old singer/songwriter owns both the lyrics and the recording to after a dispute between the ‘I Bet You Think About Me’ singer and industry executives led to it being sold without her knowledge.
Tom Poleman, the company’s Chief Programming Officer, said in as a statement: “Whenever Taylor re-records a new track, we immediately replace the old versions.”
He promised that they would play on the airwaves the music the artists “are eager to share".
He added: "Our stations will always deliver songs that artists are eager to share and fans want to hear.
Poleman said: “Listeners have made it known that they cannot wait to hear Taylor’s Version of each track. We are thrilled to provide a platform to share those with them, as well as the stories behind the songs from Taylor herself."
Taylor is currently in the process of re-recording her first six studio albums. She has already completed and released her 2008 album ‘Fearless’ and the 2012 LP 'Red - in an effort to devalue the masters that Scott Borchetta, the executive of her former label Big Machine sold to the Ithicha Holdings, which is controlled by Scooter Braun, the manager of acts such as Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande, who then turned sold it to Shamrock Holdings.
'Red (Taylor's Version)' came out on November 12 and contains nine new songs, including a 10-minute edition of the fan favourite ‘All Too Well’. The new version broke a Spotify record for first day streams for a female artist - which was previously held by Taylor’s 2020 LP ‘Folklore, which received 80.6 million - collecting an incredible 90 million listens.
Taylor has described the process of re-recording her music as an “empowering” experience.
She said: "The fans are the people who turned it into something very empowering. They were just saying to me over and over again, 'We wanna listen to your versions. If you redo it, that's what we'll listen to.
"If they hadn't done that, I don't think I'd be having this amazing exciting experience of being here.”
