AP News:

In a lengthy note posted to her official website on Friday, Swift announced: “All of the music I’ve ever made now belongs to me.”

The pop star said she purchased her catalog of recordings — originally released through Big Machine Records — from their most recent owner, the private equity firm Shamrock Capital. She did not disclose the amount.

Billboard:

According to sources, Shamrock sold Swift’s catalog back to her for an amount relatively close to what they paid for it — which sources tell Billboard was around $360 million.

Congratulations to Swift. As Prince said, “If you don’t own your masters, your master owns you.”

I went to Swift’s site to read the message, and it was a photo of a handwritten letter with tiny text, effectively unreadable to me.

And that’s how I learned I’m not Taylor’s target audience.

The team behind her site is aware of the concept of “accessibility”; they have an Accessibility link at the bottom (which is effectively meaningless legal pablum, really). The image includes an alt tag, but it says only “Handwritten letter from Taylor”—not exactly helpful. The image also includes an aria-describedby tag containing the full text of the letter—but it’s available only to screen readers. Those of us capable of reading the screen without a screen reader, but who struggle to read tiny text, are left to fumble our way through.

Tiny on-screen content is one reason I’ve enabled three features on my Mac: 

1. In Apple menu > System Settings > Accessibility > Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom
2. In Apple menu > System Settings > Accessibility > Hover text
3. In Safari > Settings > Advanced > Never use font sizes smaller than 10

As configured on my Mac, I can press the Control ⌃ key and swipe up and down on my mouse or trackpad to zoom in and out of the screen; or hover over text or UI elements and press the Control ⌃ key and get a zoomed-in overlay. It makes it a lot easier to read on-screen content that’s clearly meant for much younger eyes.