Is Taylor Swift Really ‘Playing the Victim’ in Her Masters Dispute With Scooter Braun?
Leave it to Taylor Swift to break the internet over a record label acquisition. Usually complex, insider maneuvering over a musician’s right to her masters wouldn’t merit the tabloid treatment. But Taylor Swift disrupted business as usual on Sunday, posting a lengthy response to the news that Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings media company had acquired the Scott Borchetta-founded Big Machine Label Group. As Variety explained, “The acquisition encompasses all aspects of BMLG’s business, including its client roster, distribution deals, publishing sides and owned artist masters—including the rights to Taylor Swift’s first six albums.”
To hear Swift tell it, the Prideful pop star had no prior knowledge of the $300 million deal. “I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world,” the singer told her fans. She alleged that she “pleaded for a chance to own my work” for years. “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.”
According to Swift, the fact that Scooter Braun would be acquiring the rights to her first six albums made the sale particularly devastating: “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at [Braun’s] hands for years.” Swift went on to write about the powerful talent manager’s role in her career nadir, when her longstanding feud with Kanye West culminated in a public calling out by Kim Kardashian. In her update, Swift included an Instagram from Justin Bieber that he posted at the time, FaceTiming with West and Braun, captioned “Taylor swift what up.” Swift annotated the image, writing, “This is Scooter Braun, bullying me on social media when I was at my lowest point. He’s about to own all the music I’ve ever made.” Swift referenced this post in her response, recalling, “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.” She also cited “when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked” as another example of Braun’s “bullying.”