Yesterday, Taylor Swift announced that after a protracted battle, she had secured ownership over the master recordings of her first six albums. If you’re unfamiliar with the saga, the short version is that while as the writer of all her songs (though sometimes with co-writers), she owned the songs themselves, her initial contract allocated the rights to the master recordings of her first six albums to her production company, Big Machine Records. This is a pretty common structure in the music industry.
But Swift wanted to own her own music, and after her initial deal expired, she tried to get the rights to her original work, and so changed production companies to Republic, which gave her the rights to her future work.