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Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Scooter Braun's Response to Still-Angry Taylor Swift Fans on Catalog Purchase: 'They Made the Horrible Miscalculation That I Care'
Scooter Braun has a message for Swifties, who are still angry with him over the handling of Taylor Swift's master recordings from six years ago. The music executive and former music manager made a recent appearance on Danielle Robay's Question Everything podcast, where he opened up about the hate he still receives from Swift's fan base years after the original sale of her catalog to Braun's Ithaca Holdings when he acquired her old record label Big Machine Label Group in 2019. The following year, Ithaca sold Swift's masters to Shamrock Capital for a reported $300 million, which the singer infamously criticized, leading her to rerecord her albums. More from The Hollywood Reporter Justin Bieber's 'Swag': A Silver Lining for the No. 2 Chart Debut Why Rock Music Is Thriving in the Streaming Era Laysla De Oliveira to Star in 'Cowboy,' the Debut Feature From Midland's Cameron Duddy (Exclusive) 'You know, me even talking about this now, there's gonna be … They're gonna be yelling and screaming and this, that and the other,' Braun said. 'You can't say anything right, and it is what it is. My response to that is they made the horrible miscalculation that I care. You know, I don't know those people out there. And if I met them in person and they needed my help, as a stranger, I would help them. 'I think people forget that when you have a fan base that big and 10,000 people are yelling at you, it feels like the world is ending, but that's less than 1 percent of a fan base that big,' Braun continued. 'I think most people are dealing with their own problems. I think most people are dealing with their own insecurities the same way I am, the same way every artist and every human being is. And I think it's just a more productive use of your time to not get stuck in the craziness of celebrity fodder and focus more on being kind to people.' Elsewhere in the interview, Braun said he believes 'everybody in the end won,' despite the years-long feud. 'We did very well in that sale because we bought it at a really great price and the value of the masters went up,' Braun said when asked to further explain what he meant. 'When I sold it, she had announced she was gonna do rerecords. And if you understand music, the value went up for the masters because Spotify and streamers created a longer decay than buying just CDs. People would listen to them more, so there's a longer decay, but it's still decaying. But when she rerecorded, all ships rise in a world of streaming. So people were going on and they were A/B-ing them. They were listening in to see how much they sounded like [the originals]. 'So she did incredibly well and basically had the biggest moment of her career, reinvigorating her career with each one. It was brilliant on her part, but also each time she released one, you saw a spike in the original catalog,' he added. 'So, funny enough, everyone involved in the saga, from a business standpoint … One, she's the biggest she's ever been, the biggest artist of all time. We did really well with the asset. The people who bought the asset did really well because of those spikes. The only thing that I'm sad about is, that's a great example where all ships can rise and there doesn't need to be an enemy.' Robay notes in the episode's description on YouTube that the interview with Braun was filmed in April, before it was announced in May that Swift had bought back the rights to her first six albums in the deal with Shamrock Capital. 'This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams,' Swift said of the deal back in May. Best of The Hollywood Reporter From 'Party in the U.S.A.' to 'Born in the U.S.A.': 20 of America's Most Patriotic (and Un-Patriotic) Musical Offerings Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Scooter Braun on Taylor Swift buying masters: 'Everybody in the end won'
Music executive Scooter Braun broke his silence on Taylor Swift buying her master recordings, saying: "The cool part, if you actually pay attention, is everybody in the end won." The comment comes just past the halfway mark of his appearance on the "Question Everything" podcast hosted by Danielle Robay. Around the 46 minute mark, Robay brings up Braun's company Ithaca Holdings and its 2019 acquisition of the rights to Swift's first six albums from Big Machine Label Group along with the work of other artists including Thomas Rhett and Florida Georgia Line. "If people didn't know you from your work with all these artists like [Justin] Bieber and Ariana [Grande], they definitely know you from the Swift saga," Robay said. "What happened?" Braun replied. Notorious Nashville: 2019 was year of feuds with Taylor Swift, Scooter Braun, NFL and cherry trees. In 2019, Taylor Swift told fans in a Tumblr post that she "wasn't given an opportunity to buy" the original recordings of her first six albums. She also said two of Braun's clients — Bieber and Kanye West — had bullied her online and described the sale of her catalog to Braun as her "worst case scenario." On the podcast, Braun responded to Swift's original statement, "Like when Taylor says she wasn't offered the masters, the reason I was under NDA is because we were in negotiations to sell it back to her. I choose to believe her that maybe they didn't tell her." Robay asked, "Who's they?" to which Braun answered, "Her team. Maybe her team didn't tell her, didn't understand the negotiations." In 2020, Braun sold the masters to Shamrock Capital, which sold them back to the superstar in May. Swift shared a letter on her website saying, "I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me... I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead." Taylor Swift's fight to own her music changed recording contracts in ways good and bad Braun explained why, from a business standpoint, he believes everyone came out ahead — despite the controversy. Swift's decision to rerecord her first six albums led to surges in streaming for both the original versions and the newly released "Taylor's Versions." "She's the biggest she's ever been, the biggest artist of all time," he said referencing the global success of her Eras Tour. Braun told Robay he wished one thing had gone differently. "The only thing that I really regret is it's easy to have a monster, if you never meet them," he said. "Taylor and I have only met three times in our life, and I think at that point we hadn't seen each other in two, three years. I was managing people she wasn't a fan of, and she probably saw my name come up and thought, 'I don't like those people so I don't like him.'" The music mogul first met Swift in 2010 when Bieber opened for her on the "Fearless" tour. Follow Bryan West, the USA TODAY Network's Taylor Swift reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.
Cosmopolitan
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
Scooter Braun Denies That 'Vigilante Shit' Is About His Divorce
Scooter Braun is breaking his silence on Taylor Swift's lyrics that are widely speculated to be about his personal life. During an interview on the Question Everything podcast with Danielle Robay, Scooter denied that the Grammy winner's track, 'Vigilante Shit,' calls out his divorce from his ex-wife, Yael Cohen. 'No, 'cause I talk to Yael every day,' Scooter said on the July 17 episode of the pod. 'My ex-wife is one of my best friends. So, me and my ex-wife laugh about that stuff. We don't even call each other 'ex.' That's, like, my partner. [She's] the mother of my children [and] that is my family for life.' The former music manager added, 'I have a tattoo on my finger that says 'same team' after my divorce because she and I are [on the] same team for life. It's what we say to each other. So, no, I never thought that it was about us, [and] she never thought it was about us.' At the time of its release, Taylor was in the thick of her re-recording process amid her long-standing feud with Scooter. Swifties speculated that 'Vigilante Shit' was pointed toward the former music manager, who had finalized his divorce with Yael in September 2022, a month before Taylor's 10th album, Midnights, dropped. According to court docs obtained by Us Weekly, the former couple agreed to split assets with Scooter paying child support. 'She needed cold hard proof so I gave her some / She had the envelope, where you think she got it from? / Now she gets the house, gets the kids, gets the pride / Picture me thick as thieves with your ex-wife,' Taylor muses on the track. Fans also pointed out that some lyrics could potentially point to Scooter's $200 million legal dispute over his private equity fund, Ithaca Holdings: 'While he was doing lines / And crossing all of mine / Someone told his white-collar crimes to the FBI / And I don't dress for villains / Or for innocents / I'm on my vigilante shit again.' While he denied that his past relationship was the inspiration behind Taylor's 2022 song, he gave the singer-songwriter props and called it a 'great strategy move' to build up hype around the release. As for where he stands with the pop culture icon, Scooter said that their longtime feud is water under the bridge during a June 2025 appearance on the Diary of a CEO podcast. 'Everyone moves on,' he said at the time. 'I choose to see it as a gift. I choose to see it as being able to have a perspective that very few people in the world have of knowing what that's like. Of feeling that on a global level.'
Buzz Feed
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Scooter Braun Denies Taylor Swift Song Is About Him
It's fair to say that since 2019, Scooter Braun's name has been most prominently associated with Taylor Swift, with the singer publicly putting him on blast after his company, Ithaca Holdings, bought her old record label, Big Machine Records, from her former manager, Scott Borchetta, for $300 million. If you need reminding, the deal meant that Scooter would profit from the sales and use of all of the music that Taylor released through Big Machine during her 10-year contract with them, which included her first six albums. Prior to this point, Scooter had managed both Justin Bieber and Kanye West, with Taylor embroiled in a pretty infamous feud with the latter for several years. The feud had reignited in 2016, and at the peak of her downfall, Justin posted a screenshot of a FaceTime call with laughing Scooter and Kanye to his Instagram page alongside the goading caption: 'Taylor swift what up."Which is why it's pretty unsurprising that Taylor wasn't exactly thrilled that Scooter now owned her life's work, and she addressed this in a lengthy Tumblr post shortly after news of the Big Machine sale went public. In the statement, Taylor said she didn't sign a new contract with Big Machine because she knew Scott was planning to sell. She also revealed that she rejected a new contract even though it offered her the opportunity to 'earn' the rights to one old album for every new one she released. The star then said that Scott selling to Scooter was her 'worst case scenario' as she called out the 'incessant, manipulative bullying' she'd received at Scooter's hands over the years. Taylor went on to allege that Scooter had 'stripped' her of her life's work that she 'wasn't given the opportunity to buy.' 'When I left my masters in Scott's hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter,' she wrote. 'Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words 'Scooter Braun' escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to.'Scooter has addressed the situation several times over the years, and previously said that he thought it was 'unfair' how everything went down so publicly, and that he thought he'd have the opportunity to 'be in business' with Taylor. The music exec ended up selling Taylor's catalog, including all associated videos and artwork, to Shamrock Holdings for over $300 million in October 2020 — just over a year after he bought Big following month, Taylor issued a statement revealing that she and Scooter's respective teams had been in negotiations for her to regain ownership of the masters, but she backed out when his team allegedly asked her to sign an 'ironclad NDA' stating she would never say another word about Scooter 'unless it was positive.'She went on to explain that while she had been 'open' to partner with Shamrock when they initially reached out to her, she was left dismayed to learn that the terms of Scooter's sale meant that his company would continue to profit from her work. 'As soon as we started communication with Shamrock, I learned that under their terms Scooter Braun will continue to profit off my old musical catalog for many years,' Taylor wrote. 'I was hopeful and open to the possibility of a partnership with Shamrock, but Scooter's participation is a non-starter for me.'As you probably know, this whole situation led to Taylor rerecording her first six albums — complete with brand new tracks 'from the vault' — in order to have ownership of her music, and she only had her self-titled debut and 2016 album Reputation left to re-release when she announced earlier this year that she'd bought the rights to the original master recordings from Shamrock for a reported $360 million. And Scooter has now opened up some more about this whole experience during a recent appearance on the Question Everything podcast, where he even shut down a years-old fan theory that one of Taylor's most brutal revenge songs, 'Vigilante Shit,' is about him. Speaking to host Danielle Robay, he admitted that it feels like a 'waste of time' to rehash the six-year-old situation all over again, before doubling down on his past claims that Taylor's team had actually been in negotiation to buy her masters from him when she published that original Tumblr post. 'When Taylor says that she wasn't offered the masters, the reason I was under NDA was because we were in negotiations to sell it back to her,' he claimed. 'I just choose to believe her that maybe they [her team] didn't tell her.''Taylor and I have only met three times in our life, and I think at that point we hadn't seen each other in two, three years,' Scooter went on. 'I was managing people she wasn't a fan of, and she probably saw my name come up and was like: 'I don't like those people, so I don't like him.' But we never had an opportunity to sit in front of each other and actually have a conversation to this day.'He also shut down Taylor's claim that he wanted her masters for 'nefarious reasons,' saying: 'I don't have any nefarious reasons… That was a major risk for me at the time, to buy that company. I couldn't afford to do it for nefarious reasons, like, just from a financial standpoint, that doesn't make any sense. I needed her to be successful for me to take that risk. There's nothing nefarious about it.''I just wish that it didn't take such a toll on my family,' Scooter then said. 'It was a very tough time for us, because there's a lot of people out there that don't understand, and they hear this stuff and they take it to a level that's really not OK.' Scooter was married to Yael Cohen when all of this was going down, with the two splitting in 2021. The couple share three children: 10-year-old Jagger, 9-year-old Levi, and 7-year-old Hart, and Scooter revealed that somebody said something 'very mean' to Jagger because of the messy Taylor situation. 'My kids were really young then,' he said when asked if he'd discussed what went down with them. 'But my oldest is 10, and someone said something very mean to him at school… But the beautiful thing is, I didn't have to talk that much because my kids know who their dad is.' One year after the breakdown of Scooter and Yael's marriage, Taylor released her 2022 album Midnights, which includes the brutal revenge song 'Vigilante Shit' that many interpreted to be about Scooter. 'She needed cold, hard proof, so I gave her some / She had the envelope, where you think she got it from?' Taylor sings. 'Now she gets the house, gets the kids, gets the pride / Picture me thick as thieves with your ex-wife / And she looks so pretty / Driving in your Benz / Lately she's been dressing for revenge.''Did you ever think these [lyrics] were about you?' Danielle bluntly asked Scooter on the podcast, and he immediately insisted that they weren't. 'No, because I talk to Yael every day,' he retorted. 'My ex-wife is one of my best friends, so me and my ex-wife laugh about that stuff. We don't even call each other ex. That's like my partner, you know? That's the mother of my children. That is my family for life.' 'I have a tattoo on my finger that says: 'Same team' after my divorce, because she and I are same team for life,' he continued. 'It's what we say to each other. So, no, I never thought that was about us, she never thought it was about us, and everyone else kind of feeding into the fire… Great strategy move, but, like, no.' Elsewhere in the podcast, Scooter insisted that everybody involved in the masters mess ended up winning in the end, saying: 'She could have bought them back and that could have been part of the victory… But I choose to think her team maybe didn't tell her. But when they turned it down, we ended up selling it to someone else because she didn't want us to have it. We did very well in that sale because we bought it at a really great price, and the value of the masters went up.' Scooter explained that Taylor's re-records actually resulted in the original recordings getting more listeners because people would play them to compare the tracks, profiting Shamrock. 'She did incredibly well and basically had the biggest moment of her career, reinvigorating her career with each one,' he said. 'It was brilliant on her part. But also, each time she released one, you saw a spike in the original catalog.''So, funny enough, everyone involved in the saga, from a business standpoint, won,' Scooter concluded. 'She's the biggest she's ever been, biggest artist of all time. We did really well with the asset. The people who bought the asset did really well because of those spikes.'He then added: 'I wish kids and people out there understood that, like, there are scenarios in life where there doesn't need to be an oppressor and oppressed, there are scenarios in life where it's a misunderstanding, yet everyone can succeed.' What do you make of Scooter's latest comments? Let me know down below!
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Taylor Swift really paid for her masters, revealed
The post What Taylor Swift really paid for her masters, revealed appeared first on ClutchPoints. Taylor Swift is finally in control of her music after a tumultuous fight to gain the masters of her first six albums. Swift announced that she was able to buy her masters after Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings bought the record label which originally owned her albums, and sold them to Shamrock Capital in November 2020. The Grammy-winning singer was finally able to buy back her masters, but it did not come at a cheap price. According to Billboard, Swift bought back her masters for a whopping $360 million. Previous reports indicated that Swift paid $1 billion to own her music. It was also debunked that Braun was the reason behind the Shamrock sale. 'Contrary to a previous false report, there was no outside party who 'encouraged' this sale. All rightful credit for this opportunity should go to the partners at Shamrock Capital and Taylor's Nashville-based management team only,' the source told PEOPLE. 'Taylor now owns all of her music, and this moment finally happened in spite of Scooter Braun, not because of him.' In a handwritten note posted to her official website, Swift gave insight to her fans on the journey she went through in order to obtain her masters. 'I'm trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow. A flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and prayed away for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was thisssss close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that's all in the past now. I've been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words: All of the music I've ever made… now belongs to me.' By buying her masters, she was able to gain ownership of albums: Taylor Swift, 1989, Reputation, Red, Speak Now, and Fearless. She added: 'To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty casual about it. To my fans, you know how important this has been to me—so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released four albums, calling them Taylor's Versions. The passionate support you showed those albums and the success you found giving The Eras Tour into why I was able to buy back my music. I can't thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but never owned until now. All I've ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright.' In addition to her handwritten message she also posted a picture of herself surrounded by the six albums. 'You belong with me,' she wrote in the caption before instructing fans to head to her website for the handwritten letter. In the note she also gave fans an update on the 'Taylor's Version' of her re-recorded albums. Before she bought back her masters, she was was re-recording the albums and added additional songs onto the project. She told fans that have been anticipating Reputation (Taylor's Version) that that album as well as her self-titled re-recording will 'have their moment to re-emerge when the time is right, if that is something you guys would be excited about.' 'But if it happens, it won't be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.'
