Scooter Braun Regrets His Taylor Swift Feud After Selling Her Masters
In 2019, music manager Scooter Braun purchased the rights to Taylor Swift‘s masters from her first six albums. The deal, reportedly worth upwards of $300 million, led to a public feud between Swift and Braun that ultimately resulted in Swift resolving to re-record her first six albums. In hindsight, Braun wishes it had happened differently.
Scooter Braun called his Taylor Swift feud ‘confusing’
Braun spoke about the controversy with Swift’s masters — and Swift’s public comments about it — in a 2021 interview with Variety.
“I regret and it makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” Braun said. “All of what happened has been very confusing and not based on anything factual.”
He went on to explain that he offered her a chance to buy back her masters, but claimed she turned it down. “I asked for her to sit down with me several times, but she refused,” Braun said. “I offered to sell her the catalog back and went under NDA, but her team refused. It all seems very unfortunate.” Swift called him out on Tumblr for his “incessant, manipulative bullying” both before and after the masters controversy.
“The thing that struck me the worst is the word ‘bully,’” Braun said said. “I’m firmly against anyone ever being bullied. I always try to lead with appreciation and understanding.”
Braun believed it was all a misunderstanding between the two parties. “I think when you’re successful, you are misunderstood,” he said. “There’s always going to be misconceptions because people want to see things the way they want to see them. But it would be really nice if we all give each other a little bit of grace.”
Scooter Braun regrets how it all happened
Braun eventually sold Taylor Swift’s masters to the private equity firm Shamrock Holdings for a reported $405 million. he opened up about his remorse for the situation in a 2022 interview with NPR.
“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,’” Braun said.
He spoke about some of the things he learned from the deal. “When I did that deal, I was under a very strict NDA with [Big Machine owner Scott Borchetta], and I couldn’t tell any artist. I wasn’t allowed to. I wasn’t legally allowed to,” he said. “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,” he went on. “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.”
Taylor is re-recording her first 6 albums
In the end, Swift will have new masters of her own — and has been setting new records in the process. She released the re-recorded albums Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021, and with “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version),” Swift notched the longest song to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in history.
