I'm 27 And Living The Swiftie/Gamer Life

My name is Lilly, and I'm a Swiftie who's dream is to meet Taylor this era. Taylor Swift followed on April 19 during the 1989 Era! I went to Taylor's concert in Seattle for 1989 and Rep!

[cages-boxes-hunters-foxes]

Taylor Swift's 'Spotify clause' is paying artists real money now

Taylor Swift's 2018 label contract provision tied to Spotify stock sales is triggering payouts, marking a major win in her fight for artists

Taylor Swift has spent years fighting for artists — first over streaming economics, then over ownership rights. One of the most consequential clauses she ever negotiated is now paying off.

The "Spotify deal" Swift secured as part of her 2018 contract with Universal Music Group (UMG) is coming through, according to the singer's team, triggering payouts to artists tied to profits from UMG's sale of its Spotify shares.

When Swift signed with UMG's Republic Records after leaving Big Machine Records in November 2018, she made one condition non-negotiable.

"As part of my new contract with Universal Music Group, I asked that any sale of their Spotify shares result in a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable," she posted back then in a handwritten-style note on her social media channels.

That final word — "non-recoupable" — is what makes the provision so significant.

In standard recording contracts, many artists are considered "unrecouped," meaning they have yet to pay back advances, recording budgets and other label expenses. In many cases, additional income streams are applied toward those balances instead of being paid directly.

Swift's clause prevents that.

By requiring Spotify equity proceeds to be distributed on a non-recoupable basis, the agreement ensures artists receive actual payouts regardless of whether they still owe money to the label. The funds cannot be used to offset existing balances. As UMG prepares to sell roughly half of its stake in Spotify, according to the company's first quarter earnings report in April 2026, artists will benefit from that deal.

This development is the latest chapter in Swift's evolving relationship with Spotify and the broader music industry.

She famously pulled her catalog from Spotify in 2014, criticizing low payouts and the impact of free, ad-supported tiers. In 2015, she publicly challenged Apple Music over its decision not to pay artists during free trial periods, prompting the company to reverse course within days. By 2017, she returned her catalog to Spotify as streaming became the industry's dominant force.

The once-rocky relationship has since transformed into one of the platform's biggest success stories. On April 23, 2026, Spotify named Taylor Swift its most globally streamed artist of all time as part of the platform's 20th anniversary celebration. She was also Spotify's Global Top Artist in both 2023 and 2024.

Her advocacy has extended beyond streaming and into ownership. On May 29, 2025, Swift published an almost 700-word letter announcing she had finally regained control of her first six master recordings. The singer-songwriter reflected on the broader industry impact of her yearslong fight.

"I'm extremely heartened by the conversations this saga reignited within my industry among artists and fans," she said. "Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I'm reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen."

[cages-boxes-hunters-foxes]

Taylor Swift Files to Trademark Her Voice and Likeness, Apparently to Protect Against AI Misuse

Taylor Swift evidently has taken a new legal step to protect her identity in the age of AI.

Taylor Swift has taken a new legal step seemingly aimed at protecting her identity in the age of AI — following in the footsteps of actor Matthew McConaughey.

On Friday, April 24, Swift’s company filed three trademark applications with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Two relate to sound trademarks covering her voice: one is “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift,” and the other is “Hey, it’s Taylor.”

The third trademark is a visual trademark covering “a photograph of Taylor Swift holding a pink guitar, with a black strap and wearing a multi-colored iridescent bodysuit with silver boots. She is standing on a pink stage in front of a multi-colored microphone with purple lights in the background.”

Here’s the image from the trademark application filing:

The filings, made on behalf on Swift’s TAS Rights Management, were spotted by intellectual-property attorney Josh Gerben of Gerben IP. According to Gerben, her trademark applications reflect growing concern among talent in the entertainment industry about potential danger of AI to steal artists’ ability to control their voice and likeness without their consent.

Variety has reached out for comment to reps for Swift and to Rebecca Liebowitz, partner at law firm Venable, who is listed on the trademark applications.

Historically, trademarks aren’t designed to protect an individual’s general likeness, voice or persona. But the theory pursued by McConaughey’s legal team is that such trademark protections would provide additional legal remedies beyond traditional right-of-publicity claims to fight against AI-generated content that misappropriates someone’s likeness.

Swift’s likeness has been used without permission in numerous AI fakes, including by Meta’s AI chatbots and in pornographic images that have circulated on the internet. In addition, in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump shared AI-generated images of the singer inaccurately suggesting that Swift had endorsed Trump.

Swift’s trademark filings come after lawyers for McConaughey secured similar trademarks. In 2025, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office granted eight trademarks for the actor. Those include a sound mark on audio of McConaughey saying, “Alright, alright, alright!” — his memorable line from the 1993 comedy film “Dazed and Confused” — and audio and video clips of him.

The lawyers behind McConaughey’s “trademark yourself” strategy believe it gives them an additional legal arrow in their quiver if they were to challenge an AI-generated replica that tried to capitalize on the actor’s image and likeness without permission. Individual states, including New York and California, already have right-of-publicity laws that prevent unauthorized commercial use of a person’s image and likeness. But trademark infringement lawsuits can be filed in federal court — a potentially potent greater deterrent to misuse, because those cases apply nationwide.

In a blog post Monday, Gerben discussed how Swift’s trademark strategy could be used to defend her name, image and likeness rights. (Gerben does not represent any parties involved in the Swift trademark filings.)

“Theoretically, if a lawsuit were to be filed over an AI using Swift’s voice, she could claim that any use of her voice that sounds like the registered trademark violates her trademark rights,” Gerben wrote. The singer’s image-based filing “serves a similar purpose. By protecting a distinctive visual, down to Swift’s commonly worn jumpsuit and pose, Swift’s team may gain additional grounds to pursue claims against manipulated or AI-generated images that evoke her likeness.”

The “trademark yourself” approach has not yet fully been tested in court with respect to AI. However, in theory, an actor or artist with such trademark protections could issue takedown claims against an AI platform similar to the way a studio can enforce its copyrights. In December 2025, for example, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, alleging the tech giant’s Gemini AI platform was being used to illegally generate copies of dozens of its trademarked characters. By the next day, Google had pulled down the offending videos.

“Ultimately, Taylor Swift and Matthew McConaughey’s recent trademark filings are testing new theories on how trademark law will work in the AI age,” Gerben wrote.

[cages-boxes-hunters-foxes]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/magazine/taylor-swift-songwriting-process-interview.html

The New York Times Magazine polled more than 250 music insiders and gathered six Times critics to choose the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters. One artist who made the list was Taylor Swift. The writer Joe Coscarelli met with Swift in Los Angeles to talk about the craft of songwriting. In this 30-minute interview, Swift explains her process, the stories behind some of her biggest hits, her love of a “rant bridge” and how life in the public eye informs the stories she tells in her songs

[cages-boxes-hunters-foxes]

Why Taylor Swift Is America’s Most Carefully Studied Songwriter

By crafting vivid chronicles of her life since she was a teenager, she has built a vast catalog that rewards the attention millions have pai

It was all there at the very beginning for Taylor Swift: romance, nostalgia and the occasional popping of shiny bubbles of emotion, all within the pristine economical package of a pop-country song. She was 16.

She has never stopped chasing that initial Nashville impulse — a four-ish-minute distillation of the biggest feelings imaginable, threaded through a melody that won’t leave you alone. Sometimes she brings country phrasings to electro-pop, or pop rigor to indie rock; she might let her rhymes and verses go shaggy or bring a bridge back like a chorus. Such are the perks of having mastered the form early, while amassing the cultural capital to remake pop in her image.

Pop stars are not supposed to last this long or create this much. The Beatles’ entire creative output happened, essentially, in eight years. But Swift’s durability — 12 studio albums and hundreds of songs over two decades — has given us an unprecedented combination of musical auteurism and commercial success.

Her later work often explores the tension between the two. She has a campy kiss-off register for tart bon mots — “Lights, camera, bitch, smile / Even when you wanna die,” she chirps on the fake-bubbly “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” But on the dream-pop opus “Mirrorball,” it’s all earnest reflection from the top of the mountain: “I can change everything about me to fit in.”

Swift’s latest run of dominance, the stretch that has given her two more Grammys for album of the year (and four in total, a record), began with that surprise pandemic one-two flutter of “Folklore” and its sister album “Evermore.” Simultaneously, Swift was painstakingly recreating four of her earlier albums to own them outright. Collective fervor around the “Taylor’s Version” albums sent a 10-minute director’s cut rendition of a nearly decade-old breakup ballad, “All Too Well,” to No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 2021, simply because so many listeners wanted to hear even more of a track that made them feel bruised, abandoned and devastated.

Swift has done as much as anyone in modern popular music history to advance the idea of the song — its construction and impact, its tensions and limitations — as an important art form. But she has also done it while foregrounding the agency and emotional lives of young women, and as a result has become probably the most pored-over writer — or at least up there with J.K. Rowling and the pope — of the 21st century in any medium. — Joe Coscarelli

[cages-boxes-hunters-foxes]

in light of taylor talking about her influences, i wanted to bring back one of my favorite and what i think is one of the most criminally underdiscussed pieces of taylor media, which is a playlist made by brian mansfield of the songs taylor had on her ipod when she was 18 after she allowed him to go through it (x)

[mysharona1987]

[mysharona1987]

Imagine calling another human being “a dirty”.

You can’t ever talk about other human beings like that.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Luis and Ashley REALLY liked Leon’s skills in Resident evil 4,,

[chloesimaginationthings]

Chris almost sacrificed the world for Jill in resident evil 5,,,

[chloesimaginationthings]

The talk Leon and Chris had after Resident evil requiem..

[lillyabbigale]

You made me sad for Chris 😭

[highlifeboat]

This is my understanding of Resident Evil lore

EDIT to say I misremembered that it was missiles, not a nuke, but it's insane either way

[champeng]

Finally after many attempts in trying to draw the vest. I finally did it! Not as detailed as I'd hope but man... I'm tired..

[diamondseaside]

travis is me. i am travis

[maryoliveoil]

TAYLOR SWIFT and TRAVIS KELCE At New York Knicks at Cleveland Cavaliers

[diamondseaside]

it’s honestly offensive at this point

[liberalsarecool]

The more we improve language and use tools to describe Israel, genocide, AIPAC, zionism, and antisemitism, the better we can call out the Netanyahu government and their crimes against humanity in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.

[liberalsarecool]

White people taking away voting power in black districts so white districts have more representation is so fcuking vile.

The white politicians are doing it with a smile.

[liberalsarecool]

AI data centers are the surveillance state trojan horse. #BuildingYourOwnCages

[lillyabbigale]

It's not really AI, anyway. Look at Waymo, they say their taxis are AI, but they don't move.