I’m not going to do the lengthy backstory on this, so let’s just hit the bullet points. In the summer of 2019, Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings purchased Big Machine, the record label which owned the masters of Taylor Swift’s first seven albums. Big Machine was a valuable property and they owned more than just Swift’s masters, but Swift’s masters were the biggest prize in the sale. Braun and his investors purchased Big Machine for over $300 million. Taylor Swift did what she does best, misrepresented what she knew and what was actually said, and she sent her Snake Army out to doxx and harass Scooter, his employees and his wife. Scooter’s wife called her out publicly, as did many of the music industry professionals in and around the deal.
In 2020 – about one year exactly after Braun purchased Big Machine – he sold off the Swift masters alone to Shamrock for about what he paid for all of Big Machine. Taylor has been re-recording her Big Machine-associated albums with the hope of making the original masters less profitable, but that’s not the way it worked out. Braun sold her masters and he was left with the rest of Big Machine’s assets, plus his other companies and clients. Then a few months ago, he sold Ithaca Holdings to a South Korean outfit, HYBE, for over a billion dollars. He made a profit of more than $400 million personally. Braun is winning. And Taylor is winning too. Anyway, Braun covers the latest issue of Variety where he discusses a lot of business, his goals for the future and… Taylor Swift. You can read the full piece here. The Swift-related parts:
Sharing $50 million in stock allotments between 43 people in the HYBE deal: “To take care of the people that helped me get there… It was a way of saying, “You’ve been here for me. Now everything I do, you’re participating in.” It made everybody win at the same time together, which was important to me because I learned from mistakes of the past [that] you’ve got to make sure everybody is on the same page. So in this deal, there were no losers.
How he sees the Taylor Swift drama in retrospect: “I regret and it makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal. … All of what happened has been very confusing and not based on anything factual. I don’t know what story she was told. I asked for her to sit down with me several times, but she refused. I offered to sell her the catalog back and went under NDA, but her team refused. It all seems very unfortunate. Open communication is important and can lead to understanding. She and I only met briefly three or four times in the past, and all our interactions were really friendly and kind. I find her to be an incredibly talented artist and wish her nothing but the best.
Variety notes the differing stories: Swift said in Nov. 2020, “He would never even quote my team a price” and that she was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement that would “silence [her] forever.” Braun’s team disputes the claim and says negotiations had started in earnest.
How Taylor attacked him personally: “The thing that struck me the worst is the word “bully.” I’m firmly against anyone ever being bullied. I always try to lead with appreciation and understanding. The one thing I’m proudest of in that moment was that my artists and team stood by me. They know my character and my truth. That meant a lot to me. In the long run, I’m happy for my life’s work to be the legacy I leave behind.
Whether the Swift chapter created misconceptions: ”Sure. And I think when you’re successful, you are misunderstood. Success is a game of chess, and sometimes on that chessboard, people don’t see what you’re doing until four or five moves in. 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.
What I remember about the 2019 Big Machine sale – and I looked over my coverage at the time just now – is how heavily Taylor leaned into this idea that she was completely caught off guard, that no one told her anything, that she was a little lamb being led to the slaughter of these terrible men. And… very little of that was true. People would have been on her side regardless of what she argued or said, so why did she continuously misrepresent what were on-the-record business deals and negotiations? In any case, they both came out ahead, so it is what it is.
Cover courtesy of Variety.
