Taylor Swift rages on the news of Scooter Braun acquiring her past recordings
Taylor Swift took to Tumblr on Sunday to express her frustration over news that her master recordings had been acquired by music manager Scooter Braun.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Big Machine Records, the singer’s former label and owner of her masters from her 2006 self-titled debut through 2017’s “Reputation,” had been sold to Braun’s Ithaca Holdings as part of a $300-million deal.
Swift said she felt disappointed and betrayed and called the acquisition “my worst-case scenario.”
“For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work,” she wrote. “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.”
Swift walked away from the deal, she wrote, because “I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future.”
According to the post, Swift learned of Braun’s purchase of her back catalog as it was announced publicly. “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years,” she wrote. “Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
She referenced a past skirmish with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West that saw Kardashian leak a phone conversation between Swift and West, after the rapper including a naked wax figure modeled after Swift in his “Famous” music video.
The post was accompanied by an old Instagram picture from Justin Bieber of a FaceTime screen capture where he was on a call with Braun and West captioned with “Taylor Swift what up.”
Bieber amended the post today with another Instagram picture, apologizing for the “hurtful” post and acknowledging that it was “distasteful and insensitive.” However, the star claimed that Braun wasn’t involved in his decision to post the original photo and that “Scooter has had your back since the days you graciously let me open up for you!
“For you to take it to social media and get people to hate on Scooter isn’t fair. What were you trying to accomplish by posting that blog? Seems to me like it was to get sympathy u also knew that in posting that your fans would go and bully Scooter.”
By contrast, Halsey expressed her support for the singer today on Twitter, citing her as a source of inspiration for writing her own music. “She deserves to own the painstaking labor of her heart,” she wrote. “It turns my guts that no matter how much power or success a woman has in this life, you are still susceptible to someone coming along and making you feel powerless out of spite.”
Swift also revealed that her current contract grants her all the rights to her upcoming music. Her latest album, “Lover,” is slated for release on Aug. 23.
Braun currently manages Bieber, Ariana Grande, and J Balvin, among others, and at one point co-managed West.
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