Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun
Discovery+ UK’s new documentary, Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood, premiered on Max on June 21 — reigniting public interest in feud involving the billionaire singer and the veteran music executive. Read on to learn what happened between Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun.
The two-part docuseries arrives almost exactly five years after Braun purchased Swift’s masters. In 2019, the superstar’s first six albums were bought by Braun’s Ithaca Holdings after Braun acquired her former label, Big Machine, in a $300 million deal.
Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood features interviews from legal experts, journalists, and individuals close to Swift and Braun to explore both sides of the controversial acquisition. To understand the Swift-Braun drama, you have to start from the beginning – their first meeting in 2009 and the events that have unfolded since then.
(EXCLUSIVE, Premium Rates Apply) NEW YORK – DECEMBER 11: *EXCLUSIVE* Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber … [+]
Swift and Braun first met in 2010, when his client, Justin Bieber, opened for Swift on the Fearless tour. That same night, Braun also crossed paths with CEO Scott Borchetta, who signed the rising 15-year-old singer to his then-new label, Big Machine.
“Our stories were similar,” Braun recalled in a 2019 interview with Billboard. “Everyone at Big Machine — Taylor was kind, Scott was kind — everyone was kind to me and Justin when we were doing that show, and you don’t forget those things. I never forgot that, and we started a friendship.”
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 09: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West attend the 2020 Vanity Fair … [+]
Although Swift and Braun may have started on good terms, it didn’t last, especially after Kanye West released his song “Famous” with lyrics that referenced Swift in 2016. (Prior to this, the rapper infamously interrupted her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to say that Beyoncé should have won the Female Video of the Year Award, instead.)
West’s then-wife Kim Kardashian shared a video purportedly of a phone call where Swift allegedly gave permission for West to drop her name in the song. At the time, Swift said she was not told the lyrics would include calling her a “b*tch.” An extended version of the conversation leaked in 2020 proved that Swift was telling the truth. When West asked Swift during the call what she thought about him including the line, “I made her famous,” he never mentioned the profanity.
The controversy exploded after Kanye released the video for “Famous,” which included the nude likenesses of multiple celebrities, reportedly without their permission. In her 2019 Tumblr essay, Swift called the video “a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked.” Braun started managing West just after the rapper released “Famous” until they parted ways in April 2018.
“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” Swift told Time Magazine about the incident in 2023. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” (In a 2020 social media post, Kardashian penned that the situation “forced me to defend him.”)
MONTECITO, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 28: Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta pose for a photo at a private … [+]
In June 2019, Braun’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Borchetta’s Big Machine Records in a massive $300 million deal. Swift’s catalog, which included albums Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, and Reputation, was believed to be worth about $140 million, Variety reported.
The acquisition included Big Machine’s client roster, which boasted artists like Thomas Rhett, Sheryl Crow, and Lady A, as well as Swift’s first six studio albums. Swift’s contract with Big Machine expired in the fall of 2018, and she signed a multi-year deal with Universal Music Group for future recordings in November 2018.
Taylor Swift attends the 2019 Time 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. (Photo by Greg … [+]
On June 30, 2019, Swift penned a Tumblr post writing that she learned about Braun’s “purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world.” She also labeled him a “bully” and called him “the definition of toxic male privilege in our industry.”
“For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums,” she wrote in the post.
When she learned of Braun’s purchase, Swift penned that “all I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.”
She continued, “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. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 23: Taylor Swift performs during the TIME 100 Gala 2019 Dinner at Jazz at … [+]
Kelly Clarkson was one of the first to suggest that Swift take back her music by re-recording her masters. “I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it,’” Swift recalled in her Time Magazine profile. “My dad kept saying it to me too. I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away.”
In August 2019, the singer confirmed that she would be re-recording her masters. She dropped “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” in February 2021 before rereleasing the entire album, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” that April.
Since then, Swift has released Red (Taylor’s Version), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), and 1989 (Taylor’s Version). With reclaiming each album, Swift surprised fans by including vault tracks — or songs written at the time of the original album but didn’t make the cut.
In 2023, Forbes named Taylor Swift a billionaire; she’s the first musician to reach the milestone solely from songwriting and performing. More than $500 million of Swift’s fortune came from music royalties and touring, while the other $500 million was from the increasing value of her music catalog, including her re-recordings.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 03: SB Projects Founder Scooter Braun speaks onstage during … [+]
In 2020, Braun’s Ithaca Holdings sold Swift’s masters to Shamrock Capital for $300 million. At the time, Swift said in a Twitter post that her team received a letter a few weeks prior from Shamrock Holdings — the private equity firm founded by Roy Disney — telling her that it had bought her first six albums from Braun.
“This is the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge,” Swift said in the post. According to Swift, Shamrock said that before the sale, Braun required that the firm make no contact with her or her team, or the deal would not go ahead.
Swift revealed that she learned from Shamrock that Braun would continue to profit from her old music catalog “for many years,” thus ending any form of partnership on her part. “I was hopeful and open to the possibility of a partnership with Shamrock, but Scooter’s participation is a non-starter for me,” she added.
US entrepreneur Scooter Braun attends the 2018 Pencils of Promise Gala at Duggal Greenhouse, … [+]
In 2022, Braun told NPR that he wished the Big Machine acquisition was done differently. “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.”
He explained that in the deal, he was under “a very strict NDA with the gentleman who owned it, and I couldn’t tell any artist,” likely referring to Borchetta. “I wasn’t allowed to. I wasn’t legally allowed to.”
Braun continued, “What I told him [Borchetta] was, hey, if any of the artists want to come back and buy into this, you have to let me know. And he shared a letter with me that’s out there publicly that – you know, the artist you’re referring to said, ‘I don’t want to participate in my masters. I’ve decided to, you know, not make this deal,’ blah, blah, blah. So that was the idea I was under.”
US businessman Scooter Braun (L) and Canadian singer Justin Bieber arrive for YouTube Originals’ … [+]
In the summer of August 2023, several of Braun’s most high-profile clients, including Bieber, Grande, Demi Lovato, and Idina Menzel, moved on from his music management agency, SB Projects.
Grande and Lovato both signed with Brandon Creed’s Good World Management, while it was later revealed that Bieber’s wife, model and beauty entrepreneur Hailey Baldwin, would help manage her husband’s career.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 14: Scooter Braun attends the Justin Bieber: Our World event at The … [+]
On June 17, 2024, Braun announced that he would no longer be a manager for his company, SB Projects. He said he was retiring from music management because of the toll it has taken on his family life.
“So for my entire adult life I played the role of an artist manager on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And for 20 years I loved it. It’s all I had known,” he said, adding that as his three children — whom he shares with ex-wife Yael Cohen — grew older, his personal life took some hits.
Braun explained that he had been leaning toward this decision “over the past two years,” but it wasn’t until last summer “that this new chapter became a reality.”
“One of my biggest clients and friends told me that they wanted to spread their wings and go in a new direction. We had been through so much together over the last decade, but instead of being hurt I saw it as a sign,” he added.
In his new chapter, Braun will join the board of Hybe and continue to serve as the CEO of Hybe America. Meanwhile, Swift has two more re-recordings to drop — Reputation (Taylor’s Version) and debut Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version).
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