Be Iconic by owning your masters

Welcome to The Iconic Edge, your playbook for owning the AI age.

Today, I’ll talking about what Taylor Swift's fight for her own songs can teach us about the importance of ownership. Especially now.

First, an apology. Last week's edition landed on Sunday morning instead of the usual Monday. A scheduling glitch that was my fault. If it got buried in your inbox, here it is: it’s about the surprising power of the contacts you've lost touch with.

Now, unless you've been living under a rock, you'll have heard about THE wedding. Taylor Swift married Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden on Friday, and all weekend it was all over the news and socials.

Somewhere between the dress, the decor and the guest list, I found myself on a different question: how did she get this big? Bigger than other female artists, bigger than some of the biggest names in the business. She's a billionaire, and she got there largely on her own terms.

Plenty of that is talent and graft. But a lot of it is business acumen, and one decision stands out. One she spent 6 years and a fortune on.

Getting her song masters back.

At 15, Taylor Swift signed a record deal that was standard for the industry: the label would own the master recordings of everything she made.

By 2019 that meant six albums. Her entire life's work to that point. That year the label was sold in a deal worth around $300 million, her masters went with it, and she couldn't stop it.

But she still owned one thing. She wrote the songs.

So she recorded them again. Four albums, released as "Taylor's Version", and she asked her fans to choose the copies she owned. They did, in their millions. The original recordings lost their shine, and in May 2025 she bought them back outright, for a reported $360 million.

"All of the music I've ever made now belongs to me," she wrote to her fans.

You have masters too. The programme you designed, the sales strategy you put in place, the process that turned a team around, the calls only you could have made.

And right now, most of them live on your employer's servers, under your employer's name, making your employer’s money.

The company owns the files. The thinking behind them is yours. Your judgement, your method, your point of view: those can walk out the door with you, but only if you've built a version that's yours.

And this is exactly the moment to start. AI is eating away at the old career ladder.

What holds its value is the part that can't be copied. Your unique thoughts, perspective, ideas and experience.

But if all that is sitting on someone else’s server, you can’t take it with you.

You have to create your own “masters”

Swift's move worked because she'd written the songs. Yours works because you did the thinking and gained the experience the hard way. This week:

1. Name your masters. Open a blank page or notebook (yours, not a work device) and list the 5 pieces of work you're proudest of. The programme, the turnaround, the decision everyone said was wrong until it wasn't.

For each one, note the part you'd take with you anywhere: the approach. That list is your back catalogue, and most women have never once written it down.

2. Re-record one piece. Pick one item and rewrite the thinking under your own name, stripped of anything confidential or ‘owned’ by your employer. Your version.

Swift didn't copy the recordings, she performed the songs again. 

Do the same: one page, in your words. The problem, how you approached it, what you'd tell someone facing it now. The company keeps the deck. The method is yours.

(Top tip: use a voice-to-text AI tool so you can brain dump it all more easily)

3. Publish it where you control the server. A LinkedIn post. An article. A page on a personal website. Even just a document in your own drive, to build on. Small is fine.

Once it exists under your name, it's the start of a record no employer can sell, shelve or hand back at the end of a contract.

Taylor Swift could have carried on as the best-paid employee in music, taking the label's terms and singing songs someone else owned. Plenty of artists do. Her huge power and wealth came from owning what she created, and everything she now controls flows from that one decision.

The same logic applies to us, and the timing matters more than it ever has.

Work is being rewritten, and when job titles stop holding their value, your knowledge and your experience are the assets that will. 

But they only work as assets on a platform you own. Your name, your ideas, your record, sitting somewhere you call the shots, where nothing can be sold, shelved or switched off over your head.

That's what this week's one page starts. Get it under way before things change.

Because when they do it might be too late to own anything.

Be the owner. Be iconic.

Reply and tell me the first thing going on your masters list. I read every reply.

All my best,

Nichola

P.S. If you're finding The Iconic Edge valuable, please forward this to another ambitious woman who needs to hear it. We rise together.