The pop star’s early catalog was acquired in 2019 and sold again in 2020, igniting a years-long saga in which Swift set out to re-record new versions of the albums to compete with the originals.

Taylor Swift has declared that music should not be free and that the value of an album should be based on the work the artist put into it.

The Red singer wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in which she said: “It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is.”

Swift continued: “In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace.

“Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently.”

She added: “My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet… is that they all realise their worth and ask for it.”