Taylor Swift Walked Away From a ‘Major Record Deal’ at the Start of Her Career

Taylor Swift scored a record deal when she was still a teenager. This was a huge accomplishment, and not just because she was so young. Despite this, she decided to walk away from the deal after just a year. She shared why she felt that this was the right move for her career, even in its earliest stages.

Taylor Swift walked away from a record deal in the earliest days of her career

When Swift was 13, she landed a development deal with RCA.

“A development deal is where they’re giving you recording time and money to record, but not promising that they’ll put an album out,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2007. “And they can kind of shelve you, in some circumstances.”

Swift said she had this deal for a year before deciding that it would be better for her career to move on. She knew this wouldn’t be a traditionally recommended move.

“After a year of development, we just decided that we wanted to look around, so we walked,” she said. “And it’s not a really popular thing to do in Nashville, to walk away from a major record deal. But that’s what I did, because I wanted to find some place that would really put a lot of time and care into this.”

She moved on to another label, and she felt it was a good fit for her.

“It ended up being a record label that wasn’t even in existence yet: Big Machine Records happened, and then got major-label distribution with Universal, and things have gone pretty well since then.”

Taylor Swift said the record label wouldn’t let her record her own music

Swift said that a major part of why she wanted to leave her development deal behind was because she wanted to be taken seriously as a songwriter. She said that her label wanted her to cover other people’s music.

“Actually, I’ve been writing since I was 12, so I had so many songs I wanted people to hear,” she said. “It was a combination of things, why I left, [but mostly] just because I did not want to be on a record label that wanted me to cut other people’s stuff. That wasn’t where I wanted to be.”

She shared how she sought out record deals

Swift sought out record deals by going to Nashville and pitching herself to them.

“My mom and my little brother all went to Nashville and — drove up and down Music Row,” she told NBC News. “My mom would stop in front of a record label.  And I’d run in and hand them my CD, to the receptionist.  And I’d be like, hi.  I’m Taylor.  I want a record deal.  Call me.”

She said that she didn’t hear back from many people. Eventually, she got some encouragement from a label, and she said it inspired her to learn to play guitar and start writing songs.