Scooter Braun opens up about Taylor Swift conflict

Braun shares how he could’ve handled things differently

Scooter Braun is opening up about his conflict with Taylor Swift that’s resulted in him owning the original master recordings to her first six albums for a couple of years. Her original masters were part of the sale of Big Machine in 2019 when Braun’s Ithaca Holdings LLC purchased the label. Braun no longer owns Swift’s catalog masters after selling them to Shamrock Holdings for upwards of $300 million in 2019.

Swift has been at odds with Big Machine founder Scott Borchetta and Braun over the past couple of years as she’s attempted to purchase the masters to no avail while also being caught up in live performing rights of the same songs. Swift said she was blindsided by the acquisition while Borchetta shared a different side, stating that he had texted Swift personally about the sale.

Braun’s companies, including Big Machine, were acquired by the South Korean entertainment firm, Hybe, in April 2021. Braun appears on NPR’s The Limits with Jay Williams where he discusses how he would’ve handled things differently.

“Yes, I would have. I learned an important lesson from that. So when I ended up selling our company recently to HYBE, which now is the company I’m a part of, which has BTS and chairman Bang, I told myself this time around, everyone is going to participate. Everyone’s going to know. And obviously, I was under NDAs then, too. So when I did that deal that you’re referring to with Big Machine, I was under a very strict NDA with the gentleman who owned it, and I couldn’t tell any artist. I wasn’t allowed to. I wasn’t legally allowed to. What I told him 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. I was excited to work with every artist on the label. So when we finalized the deal, I started making phone calls to say, hey, I’m a part of this. And before I could even do that – I made four phone calls; I started to do those phone calls – all hell broke loose. So I think a lot of things got lost in translation. I think that when you have a conflict with someone, it’s very hard to resolve it if you’re not willing to have a conversation. So 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. And I made that assumption with people that I didn’t know,” Braun says.

He continues, “And I learned an important lesson from that, that I can never make that assumption again. I can’t put myself in a place of, you know, arrogance to think that someone would just be willing to have a conversation and be excited to work with me. I don’t know these people. So when I did the deal with HYBE, I took 50 million of my own stock that I received, and I gave it to my employees and my artists. And it – I didn’t think it was going to become public, but it was a publicly traded company, so I can talk about it now ’cause it was very much out there. And I made sure that everyone participated significantly. And even employees that were no longer employees – you know Kenny.

“I called up Kenny, and he is a shareholder. I called up Tommy Brown, who had produced stuff with me with Arianna, and he’s a shareholder. I called up Poo Bear, who had made stuff with Justin and I, and, you know, he’s a shareholder. Justin and Ariana and Demi and J. Balvin and all these people, and they all became shareholders alongside all our, you know, major, long-term employees and former employees. And everyone felt good, you know, and they could sell the stock if they want to. It’s worth real money. But I wanted them to feel good about it ’cause I learned that lesson. And I think in any conflict, you can say, I didn’t do anything. It’s their fault. And you could be right. You could be justified. And you could say, this is unfair, I’m being treated unfairly, or you can say, OK, I’m being treated unfairly. I don’t like how this is feeling. I can’t fix this, so how am I going to look at it and learn from it? And I didn’t appreciate how that all went down. I thought it was unfair. But I also understand, from the other side, they probably felt it was unfair, too.

“So I choose to look at it as a learning lesson, a growing lesson, and I wish everyone involved well. And I’m rooting for everyone to win because I don’t believe in rooting for people to lose.”

Even though neither Braun nor Borchetta no longer possesses ownership of those master recordings, Swift still decided to re-recorded them in an effort to own all of her masters.

Over the last few years, Swift has been hard at work re-recording her first six albums — from her 2006 self-titled debut through 2017’s Reputation. The superstar has already shared Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version), as well as a newly recorded version of “Wildest Dreams” from her 1989 album which has yet to be announced. Taylor Swift, Speak Now, 1989 and Reputation are left to be released.

Swift is also supplementing the recordings with “From the Vault” songs that were written during each album’s era but left off their original counterpart. Many of those tracks are reimagined with some as collaborations with Maren Morris, Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban and others, and often double the original track listing.

Swift has broken many records with the re-recordings. With the release of Red (Taylor’s Version) on November 12th, Swift broke two Spotify single-day streaming records for the most-streamed album in a day by a female and the most-streamed female in a single day in Spotify history.

Upon Fearless (Taylor’s Version) earlier this year, Swift broke records when it landed at No. 1 around the world, marking the first time a woman has landed three No. 1 albums in less than a year with the releases of Folklore and Evermore both released last year.

With the arrival of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift extended an unprecedented record, standing out as the only artist in history to release nine albums with sales of at least 500,000 copies in a single week [Fearless, Speak Now, RED, 1989, Reputation, Lover, Folklore, Evermore, and now, Fearless (Taylor’s Version)].

Swift has broken a 54 year record held by The Beatles in the United Kingdom for the fastest accumulation of three No. 1 albums. Swift captured her third chart-topping album in a span of 259 days with Fearless (Taylor’s Version), which follows Folklore on July 31st and Evermore on December 18th.

Buddy Iahn
Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: info@themusicuniverse.com