Scooter Braun has sold Taylor Swift's master tapes

Taylor says she's begun re-recording some of her old music

Popstar Taylor Swift has confirmed that American producer and artist manager Scooter Braun has sold the rights to her first six albums.

The news comes after a long battle between the parties over Taylor's recordings, which are known as masters in the music industry.

The deal is thought to have been worth more than $300 million (£227m) and the singer says it's the second time her music has been sold without her knowledge.

Taylor Swift took to Twitter where she shared what had happened with fans. She said her team had recently received a letter from a company called Shamrock Holdings which said it had bought 100% of her music, videos and album art from Scooter.

"I simply cannot in good conscience bring myself to be involved in benefiting Scooter Braun's interests," she wrote in a letter she sent to the company, which she included in her tweet.

Scooter Braun spoke to Variety magazine about the long running dispute and said the situation had got out of hand.

"I think there are a lot of real problems in the world, and I think that these problems that are being discussed can be discussed behind closed doors and figured out pretty easily, and it's something I've wanted to do for six months," he said.

Why doesn't Taylor Swift have control over her music?

Scooter Braun (right) who is Justin Bieber's manager, purchased the record label Big Machine in 2019

Taylor signed a record deal with the label Big Machine in 2004 when she was just 15 years old.

The deal gave ownership of her masters, which is a term referring to the original recordings of songs or performances, to her label in exchange for money which was used to help launch her music career.

In the music world, a person or company which owns masters has control of what's done with original recordings. They can also re-release music, create box sets and make music available on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Some owners can make lots of money from masters, depending on how popular the songs are.

Scooter Braun, who manages Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato, bought the record label Big Machine in 2019 and this also meant he got the rights to the majority of Taylor Swift's music.

Since then, the singer has been trying to gain the rights to her masters.

Rapper Kanye West previously offered to help Taylor Swift get her masters back

At the moment, Taylor still owns the publishing rights to music which she's either written or co-written and this means can stop Braun from making certain decisions when it comes to her recordings.

The singer said she'd attempted to begin negotiations with Braun, however, she shared on social media that his legal team had asked her to sign something known as a non-disclosure agreement or NDA, stating that she would "never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive" before talks could begin.

Taylor said in her tweet that under the terms Scooter agreed with Shamrock Holdings, he'll continuing making money from her music "for many years".

"I was hopeful and open to the possibility of a partnership with Shamrock, but Scooter's participation is a non-starter for me," the star said.