A look back at the very public back-and-forth between the singer and the executive who bought her older music catalogue.
Taylor Swift has been feuding with record executive/entrepreneur Scooter Braun for what seems like forever, though it’s actually only been less than a year and a half. The fact that it seems like much longer is a testament to the amount of headlines its gotten, as well as how inflamed Swift and her fans have been about what’s perceived as Braun essentially stealing a large share of the singer-songwriter’s music. The latest news of the ongoing dispute between the two came yesterday with the news that Braun sold Swift’s masters of her first six albums to an investment fund for over $300 million. This is all part of the narrative that for Swift is really about artists’ rights, which she said she was misled into relinquishing when she signed a record deal as a teenager. The trouble for Swift with Braun officially began when his media holding company, Ithaca Holdings LLC., announced on June 20, 2019, it had acquired Big Machine Label Group. The deal, estimated at more than $300 million, gave him full ownership of all of Big Machine’s client roster, distribution deals, publishing sides, and owned artist masters. That includes all rights to Swift’s first six albums. Swift said she was stunned by the news and had only learned of the acquisition when the public was informed. She reacted on her Tumblr site with a long missive, which included: “This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.” That same statement revealed Swift first had issues with Braun dating back to 2016, even if most of the world didn’t know it. Swift wrote: “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it… Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked…” The battle lines were officially drawn at that point, and celebrity pals quickly took one side or the other.
