2 days ago
After Taylor Swift Called Scooter Braun Her 'Nemesis,' He Has Said That He Genuinely Thought She'd Want To Work With Him When He Bought Her Masters
It's no secret that Taylor Swift has long considered Scooter Braun her 'nemesis,' with Scooter being Kanye West's manager during the rapper's infamous 2016 beef with the singer.
Kevin Mazur /for The Recording Academy, Jemal Countess / Getty Images fo Anti-Defamation League
If you need reminding, the feud resulted in Taylor being branded a 'snake' across social media and led to her retreating from the public eye for almost an entire year. At the peak of her downfall, Justin Bieber even posted a screenshot from a FaceTime call with laughing Scooter and Kanye to his Instagram page alongside the goading caption: 'Taylor swift what up."
So, it's pretty unsurprising that when Taylor's former manager Scott Borchetta sold his record label, Big Machine Records, to Scooter's company, Ithaca Holdings, for $300 million back in 2019, Taylor wasn't exactly happy about it.
For reference, this 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.
Taylor addressed the situation in a lengthy Tumblr post at the time, where she said that she didn't sign a new contract with Big Machine because she knew that 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.
Taylor 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 added 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 in the post. 'Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words 'Scooter Braun' escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to.'
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Scooter has previously admitted that when he acquired Big Machine he assumed that he would 'be in business' with all of the artists that it covered, saying during an appearance on NPR's The Limits podcast: 'The regret I have there is that I made the assumption that everyone, once the deal was done, was going to have a conversation with me, see my intent, see my character and say, 'Great, let's be in business together.' I made that assumption with people that I didn't know."
"I didn't appreciate how that all went down. I thought it was unfair," he added at the time. "But I also understand, from the other side, they probably felt it was unfair, too."
And in a new interview for Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast, Scooter opened up some more about Taylor specifically as he admitted that he thought she would be enthusiastic about working with him despite his connections to Kanye and Justin.
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'When I bought Big Machine, I thought I was going to work with all the artists on [it]. I thought it was going to be an exciting thing,' Scooter began. 'Taylor, she and I had only met three or four times. And one of the times, years earlier, it was really a great engagement; she invited me to her private party, she respected me.'
'In between that time since I'd seen her last, I started managing Kanye West, I managed Justin Bieber. I knew she didn't get along with them,' he continued. 'This is where my arrogance came in — I had a feeling she probably didn't like me cause I managed them, but I thought that once this announcement happened, she would talk to me, see who I am, and we would work together.'
Scooter told Steven that he was set to call Taylor to discuss their future when her Tumblr post went live, leaving him 'shocked.'
However, he also insisted that the experience gave him a newfound empathy for the people he does work with, saying: 'I'd always say: 'Yeah, I understand', but I never knew what it was like to be on the global stage like that.'
"I never knew what criticism like that felt like,' Scooter continued. 'And like I told you, the biggest gift that I got from that was understanding that all the praise I had received up until that moment was not deserved, and all the hate I got after that moment was not deserved, because none of these people knew me. She didn't know me."
As it happens, Scooter ended up selling Taylor's catalog, including all associated videos and artwork, to Shamrock Holdings for more than $300 million in October 2020, just over a year after he bought Big Machine.
The following month, Taylor issued a statement revealing that her 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 that she would never say another word about Scooter 'unless it was positive.'
Taylor went on to say that she was 'open' to partner with Shamrock when they initially reached out to her, but was left dismayed when she learned 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,' she 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 entire mess 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 Taylor only had her self-titled debut and 2017 album Reputation left to re-release when she announced at the end of last month that she'd bought the rights to the original master recordings from Shamrock for a reported $360 million.
What do you make of Scooter's expectation to work with Taylor? Let me know in the comments below!
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