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What Taylor Swift Can Teach You About Owning Your Product Ideas

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It’s easy to think of Taylor Swift as a pop phenomenon and nothing more. But buried inside her career is one of the sharpest business case studies of the decade, a years-long fight over who owns the things you create. Whether you’re building software, designing a brand, pitching a feature, or shipping a side project, the Swift saga has lessons that go way beyond music. Here’s what her battle over her own catalog can teach you about protecting what’s yours.

Lesson 1: Read the Fine Print Before You Sign Anything

Swift’s whole ordeal traces back to a contract she signed as a teenager. She signed her first record contract at age 15, and like many major-label artists, that deal meant the label, not the artist, owned the master recordings. The trouble started years later. The original recordings of Swift’s first six albums were acquired by Scooter Braun in 2019 when he bought her label, Big Machine, and then sold to private equity firm Shamrock Capital in 2020.

The takeaway for anyone building a product: ownership is decided at the contract stage, long before anything becomes valuable. The agreements you sign early, when you have the least leverage and the most optimism, are the ones that determine who controls your work later. Read them like they matter, because they do.

Lesson 2: You Can Lose Control of Something You Created

Here’s the part that stings. The work was hers in every creative sense, but legally it wasn’t. In both the 2019 and 2020 transactions, Swift was excluded from negotiations and denied the chance to bid on her own material. She found out her life’s work was changing hands without having a seat at the table.

For builders and creators, this is the nightmare scenario. The idea you sketched, the feature you championed, the design you obsessed over, can end up owned and controlled by someone else entirely. Authorship and ownership are not the same thing. Making something does not automatically mean you control what happens to it.

Lesson 3: When You Can’t Reclaim It, Out-Build It

This is where Swift did something genuinely instructive. Rather than just litigate or complain, she went back to work. She began re-recording her earlier albums and releasing “Taylor’s Versions,” which her audience embraced and which successfully drew attention and revenue away from the original masters. She released re-recorded versions of Fearless, Red, Speak Now, and 1989, each one a fresh asset she fully owned.

The strategic insight here is huge. She couldn’t take back the old asset, so she built a new, better-controlled version and made the original less valuable. If you’ve lost control of an idea, sometimes the smartest move isn’t a legal fight. It’s shipping a superior version that you own outright and letting the market decide which one wins.

Lesson 4: Leverage Is What Gets You Ownership Back

The re-recording project wasn’t just an act of defiance. It was a negotiating tactic. The passionate fan response likely gave Swift important leverage in her negotiations with Shamrock, as fans insisted on streaming the “Taylor’s Version” albums and shunning the originals. Every fan who chose her version over the original chipped away at the value of the catalog she didn’t own, which made buying it back more realistic.

The lesson translates directly to product work. Ownership is rarely handed to you out of fairness. You earn it by building something valuable enough that you have negotiating power. Demonstrated traction, a loyal user base, a proven track record, these are the things that turn “no” into “name your price.”

Lesson 5: Patience and Persistence Pay Off

This was not a quick win. It was a grind that stretched across most of a decade. Swift described almost giving up after 20 years of “having the carrot dangled and then yanked away.” But the persistence eventually paid off in full. Roughly six years after she first protested the sale, Swift announced she had purchased her music outright “with no strings attached, no partnership, full autonomy” from Shamrock Capital. The reported price tag was significant. The deal was reportedly worth more than $300 million and gave her full control over her master recordings, including the rights to distribute, repackage, and license her earlier work.

For anyone protecting an idea, the through-line is patience. Reclaiming ownership of something valuable can take years of sustained effort. The people who win these fights are usually the ones who simply refuse to let go.

Swift’s story rewrote expectations in her industry. Her years-long saga gave new visibility to artists’ frequent struggles to obtain the full rights to their own work. But you don’t need to be a global superstar to apply the playbook. Understand your contracts. Know that creating something isn’t the same as owning it. Build leverage. And when you can’t reclaim an asset directly, out-build it until ownership comes back within reach.

Your ideas are your catalog. Treat them like the assets they are.

Everything You Need to Know About the 2026 World Cup, and How to Watch Every Match

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It’s here. The biggest World Cup in history kicks off today, and for the first time ever it’s happening right in our backyard. Whether you’re a die-hard who already has the bracket memorized or someone who just wants to know which channel to turn on, here’s your complete guide to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

When and Where It’s Happening

The 2026 FIFA World Cup runs from June 11 to July 19, 2026, jointly hosted by sixteen cities, eleven in the United States, three in Mexico, and two in Canada. This is a genuinely historic moment for the country, because it’s Canada’s first time ever hosting or co-hosting the men’s tournament. It’s also the first time a World Cup has ever been hosted by three nations, and the tournament returns to its traditional Northern Hemisphere summer slot after the strange November-December edition in Qatar.

The action opened on Thursday, June 11, with Mexico hosting South Africa at the historic Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. It all builds toward the final on July 19. The 2026 World Cup final will be played at New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Saturday, July 19 at 3 p.m. ET.

A Bigger Tournament Than Ever Before

If this World Cup feels enormous, that’s because it is. The field has been expanded dramatically. There are 12 groups of four teams representing 48 nations, which is 16 more than the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. All those extra teams mean a lot more soccer to watch. The tournament features 48 teams and 104 matches over 39 days.

The format has changed to match. The previous setup of 32 teams in eight groups has been replaced by 12 groups of four, with the top two teams in each group plus the eight best third-placed teams advancing, and the knockout stage now starting with a round of 32. In practice, that means every team is guaranteed three group-stage matches, and 32 surviving teams will make it out of the group stage into the knockouts.

How Canada Is Faring

As a host nation, Canada qualified automatically and has a real shot at making noise on home soil. The Canadian Men’s National Team is competing in their third World Cup, after appearances in 1986 and 2022, and they kick off their campaign on Friday, June 12 against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Defending champions Argentina, meanwhile, arrive looking to hold onto the title they won in 2022.

How to Watch in Canada

Here’s the good news for Canadian fans: getting access is refreshingly simple. Bell Media holds exclusive World Cup television rights in Canada and will broadcast all 104 matches across CTV in English, Noovo in French, and its subscription networks TSN in English and RDS in French.

If you want to watch absolutely everything, TSN is your home base. Every game from the tournament will be live in English on the TSN channels and in French on RDS. A good chunk of the marquee action is also available free over the air. CTV will televise selected matches including every Canada game, six round of 32 fixtures, four round of 16 clashes, all four quarter-finals, both semi-finals, and the final.

Prefer to stream? You’ve got options across devices. The entire tournament can be streamed live and on-demand through the TSN+ streaming platform, the TSN App, and TSN.ca, and matches broadcast on CTV can be streamed through the CTV App or Crave. For cord-cutters, the pricing is reasonable. You can live stream via TSN+, which costs CA$8 per month or CA$80 per year. One more handy option worth knowing about: TSN is available through Amazon Prime Video, allowing subscribers to stream matches via the platform.

A small but useful tip for streamers: the specific channel can move between TSN, TSN2, CTV, and CTV2, so check the fixture listing first to keep your stream choice simple. And if you just want a taste without committing, the official TSN YouTube channel streams all of the network’s pre-game shows along with the first 10 minutes of every match.

The Bottom Line

For the next five-plus weeks, the world’s biggest sporting event is unfolding across North America, with games being played on Canadian soil for the very first time. All 104 matches are live on TSN and RDS, the biggest moments are free on CTV, and streaming starts at just eight bucks a month. Pick your team, find your couch, and enjoy the ride. It doesn’t get more convenient than a World Cup in your own time zone.

Wes Gardner, Former Red Sox and Mets Pitcher, Dies at 65

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Wes Gardner, the Arkansas-born right-hander who pitched eight seasons in the major leagues across the 1980s and early 1990s, has died at the age of 65. He passed away on June 10, 2026.

Born Wesley Brian Gardner in Benton, Arkansas on April 29, 1961, he was drafted by the New York Mets in the 22nd round of the 1982 draft out of the University of Central Arkansas. He made his big-league debut with the Mets on July 29, 1984, retiring the side in a perfect ninth inning against the Chicago Cubs at Shea Stadium, and pitched in 30 games for New York over two seasons.

His career took its defining turn in November 1985, when he was dealt to the Boston Red Sox as part of the multi-player trade that sent Bob Ojeda to the Mets. It was in Boston that Gardner found his footing. He emerged as the team’s closer in 1987, leading the Red Sox with ten saves, before shifting into the starting rotation the following year. The move paid off immediately. He won his first four decisions as a starter in 1988 and set career highs across the board, with eight wins, 106 strikeouts, a 3.50 ERA, and 149 innings pitched.

That season also brought his lone postseason appearance, in Game 3 of the 1988 American League Championship Series against the Oakland Athletics, where he came on in relief and took a no-decision in a Boston loss.

Gardner spent two more years with the Red Sox before a December 1990 trade sent him to the San Diego Padres. He finished his playing days in 1991 with brief stops in San Diego and the Kansas City Royals organization. Over eight seasons he compiled an 18–30 record, a 4.90 ERA, and 358 strikeouts across 189 games.

His college accomplishments earned lasting recognition. In 2001, he was inducted into the University of Central Arkansas Bears Hall of Fame.

Wes Gardner was 65.

John Sanders, Veteran Baseball Broadcaster, Dies at 83

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John Sanders, the longtime baseball play-by-play announcer whose familiar voice called Major League games for more than 25 years, has died. He passed away on June 10, 2026, at the age of 83.

A Kansas native, Sanders built a broadcasting career that carried him across the country and through some of the most storied booths in the game. He got his start at WIBW-TV in Topeka before moving to KMBC-TV in Kansas City, where he spent 12 years and called preseason play-by-play for the Kansas City Chiefs.

In 1978 he headed east to Pittsburgh, joining KDKA-TV as a weekend sports anchor and later rising to sports director, a fixture on the station’s 6 and 11 o’clock newscasts. His big-league baseball break came in October 1980, when KDKA announced he would join Pirates broadcast legend Lanny Frattare for televised games beginning in the 1981 season. He remained part of the Pirates’ broadcast team for nine seasons.

In 1991 he moved to Cleveland, where he spent 16 years as a television play-by-play announcer for the Cleveland Indians on FSN Ohio, the longest and most defining chapter of his career. He called the team’s games until the Indians declined to renew his contract following the 2006 season. Beyond baseball, his versatility kept him busy, calling Big East football and basketball games into the mid-2010s.

Sanders is survived by his wife, Cherie, and their two daughters.

Sophie Faucher, Acclaimed Quebec Actress and Playwright, Dies at 68

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Sophie Faucher, the beloved Quebec actress and playwright whose decades-long career spanned stage, screen, and the written page, and who became indelibly linked to the spirit of Frida Kahlo, has died at the age of 68. She passed away on June 9, 2026.

Born in Montreal on April 10, 1958, Faucher seemed destined for the stage. She was the daughter of two pillars of Quebec theatre, actress Françoise Faucher and director Jean Faucher, and she stepped into performance remarkably young, appearing at age eight in a production of The Blue Bird alongside Marc Labrèche. She trained formally at the Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Montréal, graduating in 1978, and joined the National Arts Centre’s French theatre troupe that same year.

Her talents proved wonderfully wide-ranging. On television, she made her debut on Les Fils de la liberté and went on to become a familiar presence to generations of Québécois, from the soap opera Le cÅ“ur a ses raisons to programs like Star Académie, Des kiwis et des hommes, and Parasol et gobelets. She co-hosted Les Lionnes on Ici Radio-Canada Télé with Chantal Lamarre and Suzanne Lévesque. Her warm, expressive voice carried its own career too. She dubbed the French-language performances of Queen Latifah, Julie Christie, and Viola Davis, and was the narrator of the children’s series Caillou, making her a comforting presence in households far beyond the theatre.

On film, she worked steadily across four decades, with credits including A Day in a Taxi, Ding et Dong, How to Conquer America in One Night, and Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways, continuing right up to recent years with roles in Testament in 2023 and Extras in 2024.

But it was her lifelong artistic dialogue with Frida Kahlo that may stand as her most distinctive achievement. In 2001 she wrote and starred in Apasionada ou La Casa Azul, directed by Robert Lepage, inhabiting the role of the Mexican painter herself. She returned to Kahlo again in 2013 with Frida Kahlo – Correspondence, a play drawn from the artist’s letters, and wrote four children’s books about Kahlo that were adapted into an animated series and film. Her writing flourished late in her life, with books including Frida, c’est moi in 2023 and works devoted to opera legend Maria Callas in the years that followed.

Faucher was married to Michel Labrecque. She had been performing in the play Le duplex but withdrew from the production in April 2026 due to poor health.

Sophie Faucher was 68.

Duane Michals, Visionary Photographer Who Told Stories in Pictures, Dies at 94

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Duane Michals, the inventive American photographer who broke open the boundaries of his medium by stringing images into sequences and scrawling handwritten poetry beneath them, has died in Manhattan at the age of 94. He passed away on June 9, 2026.

Across nearly seven decades, Michals turned photography into something closer to storytelling and philosophy than documentation. While his contemporaries chased the perfect single frame, he was busy asking what a photograph could not show, and then finding ways to show it anyway.

Born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania on February 18, 1932, Michals found his way to art early, taking watercolor classes at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh at age 14. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Denver in 1953, served two years in the U.S. Army, and briefly studied at the Parsons School of Design with thoughts of becoming a graphic designer. He never finished. As a photographer, he was, in his own words, completely self-taught.

His path to the camera was almost accidental. In 1958, on holiday in the USSR, he discovered an interest in photography, and the pictures he made on that trip became his first exhibition in 1963 at the Underground Gallery in New York City. He went on to work commercially for Esquire, Mademoiselle, and Vogue, covering the filming of The Great Gatsby in 1974. Notably, he worked without a studio, photographing his subjects in their own environments, a quiet rebellion against the polished studio style of contemporaries like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn.

It was in the 1960s and 1970s that Michals developed the two innovations that would define his legacy. The first was the photo-sequence, telling a story across a series of images, as in his 1970 book Sequences. The second was text, handwritten near or beneath his photographs to convey what the picture alone could not, lending his work a confessional, literary intimacy. Themes of memory, desire, dreams, mortality, and spirituality ran throughout, as did gay themes that he explored openly even as he stayed apart from the formal civil rights movement.

His range was remarkable. He was hired by the Mexican government to photograph the 1968 Summer Olympics, exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1970, and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1976. He even crossed into the music world, creating the cover art for The Police’s 1983 album Synchronicity and for Richard Barone’s Clouds Over Eden in 1993.

Michals cited an eclectic set of muses, among them Balthus, William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Eakins, René Magritte, and Walt Whitman. In turn, he shaped a younger generation of image-makers, including David Levinthal and Francesca Woodman.

Honors accumulated across his life, including an Honorary Fellowship from The Royal Photographic Society in 1991, a gold medal from the National Arts Club in 1994, the Masters Series Award from the School of Visual Arts in 2000, and induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame in 2020. His work was shown everywhere from the Carnegie Museum of Art to the Morgan Library & Museum, and in a fitting full-circle moment, his final solo exhibition, Beyond Likeness, opened in 2026 at the University of Denver, where his journey in art had begun.

Michals was predeceased by his partner Frederick Gorrée, who died in 2017. The two had been together since 1960, a partnership of nearly six decades.

Ruth Watson Henderson, Beloved Canadian Choral Composer, Dies at 93

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Ruth Watson Henderson, one of Canada’s most cherished and widely performed choral composers, has died at the age of 93. She passed away on June 9, 2026, leaving behind a body of work that filled concert halls and choir lofts across the country and around the world.

Born Ruth Louise Watson in Toronto on November 23, 1932, she showed a gift for the piano early, beginning her studies at just five years old under Viggo Kihl. She went on to The Royal Conservatory of Music, where she trained with the legendary Alberto Guerrero and earned her ARCT and LRCT diplomas, before continuing her studies at the Mannes College of Music in New York City.

She first made her name as a pianist. After her professional concert debut in Toronto in 1952, she became a sought-after soloist with symphony orchestras across Canada and a frequent presence on CBC Radio. In 1956 she took the grand prize on the CBC talent show Opportunity Knocks, a moment that announced a major Canadian talent.

But it was at the keyboard accompanying others that her true calling found her. As longtime accompanist for the Festival Singers of Canada under Elmer Iseler, she absorbed the inner workings of fine choral singing and began to compose. That immersion produced her Missa Brevis and, later, the large-scale works that would define her, including Voices of Earth and From Darkness to Light.

Her decades alongside the Toronto Children’s Chorus, where she accompanied the ensemble under Jean Ashworth Bartle from its founding in 1978 until 2007, drew out another side of her writing. For young voices she created works like Clear Sky and Thunder, a music-drama about Inuit children premiered by the chorus in 1984, and The Last Straw, which featured the great tenor Ben Heppner in 1990.

The honors followed steadily. Her Chromatic Partita for Organ won a prize at the 1989 International Competition for Women Composers in Mannheim, Germany. Voices of Earth earned the 1992 National Choral Award for Outstanding Choral Composition. In 1996 she received the Distinguished Service Award of the Ontario Choral Federation, and in 2003 she was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Canadian College of Organists. For her 70th birthday, the Elmer Iseler Singers recorded a full concert of her music, released by the CBC in 2004 as Sing We Joyful.

An associate of the Canadian Music Centre, she leaves behind a catalogue of more than 200 choral pieces alongside works for organ, piano, violin, trumpet, and string orchestra, music known for its rich modal and impressionistic harmonies. Canadian choirs have long devoted entire concerts to her work, a rare tribute that speaks to how deeply her voice resonated with the singers who knew it best.

She served as music director at Kingsway-Lambton United Church in Toronto from 1996 to 2013, and remained active in music nearly to the end of her life. Her compositions, recorded and performed internationally, will go on being sung for generations.

Ireland’s Greatest Albums and the Festival That Celebrates Them All

There’s something in the water over there. A small island that somehow keeps producing music that ends up soundtracking the whole world. With Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann landing in Belfast this summer, it felt like the right moment to crank up the volume and celebrate the records that prove Ireland punches about a thousand times above its weight. So here we go, no rankings, no rules, just the good stuff.

The Joshua Tree, U2

The album that turned four Dublin lads into the biggest band on the planet. Recorded partly in a creaky old Georgian house, it gave us “With or Without You” and a wide-open American sound that still feels enormous decades later.

Astral Weeks, Van Morrison

A Belfast man’s fever dream of jazz, folk, and stream of consciousness poetry. It barely sold a thing on release and is now routinely called one of the greatest albums ever made. Funny how that works.

The Lion and the Cobra, Sinéad O’Connor

Before the world argued about her, they listened to her. A debut of staggering nerve and vocal power, written and largely produced by O’Connor herself while she was barely out of her teens and pregnant. Fierce doesn’t begin to cover it.

Becoming a Jackal, Villagers

Conor O’Brien’s songwriting is so sharp it practically draws blood. A Mercury nominated record that announced one of Ireland’s finest modern lyricists, full of small details that land like quiet gut punches.

Riverdance, Bill Whelan

Yes, it counts, and yes, it conquered the globe. What started as a seven minute interval act at Eurovision became a phenomenon, and Whelan’s score remains the most successful piece of Irish music most people can hum without realizing it.

The Hag at the Churn, Mary Bergin

A tin whistle master class that trad players still study note for note. If you want to understand why the Fleadh exists, this is the kind of playing it celebrates, pure, unhurried, and impossibly nimble.

O, Damien Rice

A bruised, intimate, candlelit record that turned bedroom heartbreak into something universal. “The Blower’s Daughter” alone has soundtracked roughly half the world’s breakups, and it earned every tear.

No Need to Argue, The Cranberries

Dolores O’Riordan’s voice could go from a whisper to a war cry in a single line, and “Zombie” proved it. A Limerick band that took their unmistakable sound and made it impossible to ignore.

Now, if reading this list has you itching to hear Irish music in the flesh, you’re in luck. Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann takes place in Belfast, August 2–9, 2026. The world’s largest festival of Irish music, song, and dance lands in Ireland’s only UNESCO City of Music for the first time, with the whole city buzzing with pub sessions, spontaneous street performances, céilís, and stage shows spilling out across the banks of the Lagan all week long. Come for the music, stay for the craic.

For more information visit fleadhcheoil.ie, visitbelfast.com, and discovernorthernireland.com.

Jacob Ming-Trent Brings His Shakespeare-Meets-Hip-Hop Story ‘How Shakespeare Saved My Life’ To The Folger

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Broadway’s Jacob Ming-Trent is turning his own survival story into theatre. Folger Theatre is closing its season with the world premiere of ‘How Shakespeare Saved My Life’, written and performed by Ming-Trent and directed by acclaimed theater maker Tony Taccone, running June 9 through July 5, 2026 at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The 90-minute solo work traces Ming-Trent’s turbulent youth and artistic awakening, weaving Shakespeare together with the voices and influence of Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Notorious B.I.G., and Tupac Shakur. At its heart, the piece explores how art became a lifeline, helping a young performer find identity, purpose, and a way forward.

Ming-Trent is clear about why he made it. He said he wanted to tell his story with purpose, imagining a kid out there, a young actor, a young hip-hop artist, a young painter, anyone, who needed to hear it, believing his story could help save a life. That conviction gave the show its title.

He arrives with real momentum. Ming-Trent was named one of American Theatre’s “People to Watch” in January, and his recent turn as Falstaff in Shakespeare Theatre Company’s “Merry Wives” earned a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Best Ensemble. Folger audiences may remember him as Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the National Building Museum in 2022. His Broadway credits include “Shrek the Musical,” “Hands on a Hardbody,” and the recent revival of “Gypsy,” with screen work spanning “Watchmen,” “Only Murders in the Building,” and “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” plus a Drama Desk nomination for Falstaff at The Public Theater.

The creative team is stacked. It includes Tiffany Rachelle Stewart on choreography, Takeshi Kata on scenic design, Danielle Preston on costumes, Alan C. Edwards on lighting, Jake Rodriguez as sound designer and composer, and Alexander V. Nichols on projection design. The work was co-commissioned by Folger Theatre and Red Bull Theater, and co-produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Folger Theatre, and Red Bull Theater. After the Folger run, it makes its New York City premiere this fall in Red Bull Theater’s production at The Public Theater. Tickets start at $20 through the Folger Box Office and folger.edu/saved.