Pop

It was announced on June 30, 2019, that Braun’s Ithaca Holdings agreed to acquire Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group in a blockbuster deal backed by the massive global investment firm the Carlyle Group. The deal topped $300 million and also included Big Machine Music, the music publishing operation.

“The idea of Scott and I working together is nothing new, we’ve been talking about it since the beginning of our friendship,” Braun said in a statement. “I reached out to him when I saw an opportunity and, after many conversations, realized our visions were aligned. He’s built a brilliant company full of iconic songs and artists. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? By joining together, we will create more opportunities for artists than ever before, by giving them the support and tools to go after whatever dreams they wish to pursue.”

The deal was financed by the Carlyle Group’s Carlyle Partners VI Fund, alongside Braun and Ithaca Holdings. The company also announced that Carlyle would remain a minority shareholder in Ithaca and continue to support the combined company’s growth strategy with Carlyle Group global consumer, media and retail team head Jay Sammons remaining on Ithaca’s board. Borchetta would acquire a minority interest in Ithaca and join its board while remaining president and CEO of BMLG.

The label previously lost Swift to Universal Music Group’s Republic Records in 2018, but still retained her catalog. Other artists on their roster at the time included Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett, Reba McEntire, Rascal Flatts, Brantley Gilbert, Lady Antebellum, Cheap Trick and Jennifer Nettles.

In a letter posted to Tumblr shortly after the announcement, the megastar outlined why she was so upset with the new development. She said that she learned of the deal “as it was announced to the world,” but according to a Billboard source, her team had known about the acquisition since June 25, 2019, when Big Machine held a shareholders meeting to discuss the deal.

Her father, Scott Swift, also owns a small stake in Big Machine (about 4%). Braun is buying out his stake, as well as those of other minority shareholders.

Swift went on to share that the deal made her revisit all of the times she was allegedly bullied by Braun and his clients. “Like when 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 said. “Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. 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 also went on to question Borchetta’s loyalty, saying that he knew how Swift felt about Braun.

The Big Machine label founder/CEO penned a letter titled, “So, It’s Time for Some Truth,” also posted June 30, 2019. He shared that he texted Swift the night before the deal went public: “I guess it might somehow be possible that her dad Scott, 13 Management lawyer Jay Schaudies (who represented Scott Swift on the shareholder calls) or 13 Management executive and Big Machine LLC shareholder Frank Bell (who was on the shareholder calls) didn’t say anything to Taylor over the prior 5 days. I guess it’s possible that she might not have seen my text. But, I truly doubt that she ‘woke up to the news when everyone else did.’”

Borchetta also disputed Swift’s claim that he’d proposed she “‘earn’ one album [master] back at a time, one for every new one [she] turned in.” “100% of all Taylor Swift assets were to be transferred to her immediately upon signing the new agreement,” he wrote, sharing a scan of a response to a proposal between Swift’s management team and her attorney Don Passman, named “TS Proposal” and dated Aug. 15, 2018. In the document, BMLG agreed that “Upon execution [of a new contract], BMLG shall assign to TS all recordings (audio and/or visual), artwork, photographs and any other materials relating to TS which BMLG owns or controls.” Swift’s team was asking for a new seven-year contract, while BMLG wanted a 10-year deal.

He also responded to Swift’s comment about fighting back tears every time Braun’s name was brought up: “Was I aware of some prior issues between Taylor and [Braun client] Justin Bieber? Yes….Scooter was never anything but positive about Taylor.”

Demi Lovato took to her Instagram Story on July 1, 2019, to defend Braun (“I’m always gonna stay loyal to my team”), as did his most famous long-term client, Bieber, whom Swift had also called out in her Tumblr post for “bullying” her with Braun via a post on the “Baby” singer’s Instagram.

Bieber’s post on June 30, 2019, started off as an apology to Swift: “First of all i would like to apologize for posting that hurtful instagram post, at the time i thought it was funny but looking back it was distasteful and insensitive,” he wrote in the caption of a throwback photo.

He also took full responsibility and stressed that Braun “didn’t have anything to do with it and it wasn’t even a part of the conversation in all actuality he was the person who told me not to joke like that.” But as the post went on, Bieber began to accuse Swift of the bullying. “As the years have passed we haven’t crossed paths and gotten to communicate our differences, hurts or frustrations. So 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.”

Other celebrities spoke out in Swift’s favor. For one, Halsey posted a heartfelt note sharing her point of view: “Taylor Swift is a huge reason why I always insisted to write my own music. I believed if she did it (in a way that made my teeth ache like cold water and my heart swell and my eyes leak) than I should too. Cause that’s how to make someone feel. To drag it from the pits of your heart. To offer it on a platter and say ‘take some but take kindly.’ She deserves to own the painstaking labor of her heart.”

“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,” she continued. “It speaks volumes to how far we have to come in the music industry.”

Hall also responded, accusing Braun of being “an evil person who’s only concern is his wealth and feeding his disgusting ego.” He went on to say, “I believe he is homophobic & I know from his own mouth that he is not a Swift fan.”

Kahn, a frequent director of Swift’s music videos, added: “I feel terrible for Taylor. This is the record business at it’s most ruthless and shady. She is genuinely one of the nicest people ever and does not deserve this. She should own her work.”

Yael Cohen, who was married to Braun at the time (the couple divorced in 2021), took to Instagram June 30, 2019, to defend her husband: “Your dad is a shareholder and was notified, and Borchetta personally told you this before it came out. So no, you didn’t find out with the world.”

She went on to address Swift’s bullying comment, “Girl, who are you to talk about bullying? The world has watched you collect and drop friends like wilted flowers. My husband is anything but a bully, he’s spent his life standing up for people and causes he believes in.”

A spokesperson for Swift denied that her father Scott knew of the deal in advance, telling People, “Scott Swift is not on the board of directors and has never been. On June 25, there was a shareholder phone call that Scott Swift did not participate in due to a very strict NDA that bound all shareholders and prohibited any discussion at all without risk of severe penalty.”

Swift’s attorney, Don Passman, stepped into the battle with a statement on July 2: “Scott Borchetta never gave Taylor Swift an opportunity to purchase her masters, or the label, outright with a check in the way he is now apparently doing for others.”

Passman almost never comments on artists’ deals, so it was an unusual move for him to speak out on the case at all. He declined to comment beyond the statement to Billboard.

Despite the back-and-forth regarding Swift’s masters, Braun took a moment to congratulate the singer on the release of her seventh studio album, Lover. “Regardless of what has been said the truth is you don’t make big bets unless you are a believer and always have been,” he tweeted. “Brilliant album with #Lover. Congrats @taylorswift13.”

In an exclusive interview with CBS This Morning to promote Lover, her first album with Republic Records, Swift announced a plan to circumvent Braun’s purchase of her masters altogether by re-recording each of her first six albums. During the sit-down, she also shaded Borchetta’s choice to sell her masters to Braun, saying, “I knew he would sell my music, I knew he would do that. I couldn’t believe who he sold it to. Because we’ve had endless conversations about Scooter Braun, and he has 300 million reasons to conveniently forget those conversations.”

After months of simmering tension, Swift’s dispute with Braun and Borchetta reached a new level on ahead of the 2019 American Music Awards. In a viral post across her social media platforms, the superstar accused Braun and her former label boss of refusing to allow her to use any songs from her back catalog in her performance at the award show, where she was set to be honored as artist of the decade. Additionally, Swift claimed the two men were denying use of her older hits in a previously unannounced Netflix documentary about her life, and claimed “any other recorded events I am planning to play until November of 2020 are a question mark.”

In an unsigned press release posted to their website shortly after Swift’s statement, the singer’s former label refuted her claims. Big Machine denied keeping her from performing at the AMAs or blocking the Netlfix special — without directly addressing the use of her past hits in either — and fired back an allegation that Swift “has admitted to contractually owing millions of dollars and multiple assets to our company.”

Halsey, Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid and more pals and peers of Swift once again took to social media to stand by her. “My heart is so heavy write now,” Gomez posted on Instagram. “It makes me sick and extremely angry. (I [don’t] mind if there may be retaliation) this is my opinion. It’s greed, manipulation and power.”

“This is just mean. This is punishment. This is hoping to silence her from speaking about things by dangling this over her head,” Halsey wrote on her Story, while Hadid stated, “Scott and Scooter, you know what the right thing to do is — Taylor and her fans deserve to celebrate the music!!”

Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, promptly issued a statement doubling down on Swift’s claim that Borchetta “flatly denied the request for both American Music Awards and Netflix” before adding, “Please notice in Big Machine’s statement, they never actually deny either claim Taylor said last night in her post.”

Paine’s statement also accused Swift’s former label of “trying to deflect and make this about money” and retaliated by maintaining that “a professional auditor has determined that Big Machine owes Taylor $7.9 million dollars of unpaid royalties over several years.”

Though Swift was not mentioned by name, a representative for Big Machine said in a statement to Billboard that the company has “agreed to grant all licenses of their artists’ performances to stream post show and for re-broadcast on mutually approved platforms.”

“It should be noted that recording artists do not need label approval for live performances on television or any other live media,” the statement continues. “Record label approval is only needed for contracted artists’ audio and visual recordings and in determining how those works are distributed.”

Swift went on to perform a number of her old songs at the AMAs, including “Love Story,” “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “Shake It Off.” She seemingly alluded to her ownership battle by wearing a men’s button-down printed with the names of her first six album titles at the beginning of her performance, singing a snippet of “The Man.”

In an open letter to Swift posted on Instagram, Braun revealed that he and his family had received “numerous death threats” since the pop star’s statement about the AMAs. “I assume this was not your intention but it is important that you understand that your words carry a tremendous amount of weight and that your message can be interpreted by some in different ways,” he continued in the post. “While disappointed that you have remained silent after being notified by your attorney 4 days ago of these ongoing threats, I’m still hopeful we can fix this.”

During her Woman of the Decade interview with Billboard, Swift said, “Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use ‘Shake It Off’ in some advertisement or ‘Blank Space’ in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.”

“It’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine,” she said of the re-recording process. “When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.”

While accepting the Woman of the Decade honors at Billboard‘s Women in Music event, Swift touched on her feud with Braun. “Lately there’s been a new shift that has affected me personally and that I feel is a potentially harmful force in our industry, and as your resident loud person, I feel the need to bring it up,” she said at the ceremony. “And that is the unregulated world of private equity coming in and buying up our music as if it is real estate. As if it’s an app or a shoe line. This just happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent.

After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros Family, 23 Capital, and the Carlyle Group. Yet to this day none of these investors have ever bothered to contact me or my team directly. To perform their due diligence on their investment. On their investment in me. To ask how I might feel about the new owner of my art. The music I wrote. The videos I created. Photos of me, my handwriting, my album designs. And of course, Scooter never contacted me or my team to discuss it prior to the sale or even when it was announced.

I’m fairly certain he knew exactly how I would feel about it though. And let me just say that the definition of the toxic male privilege in our industry is people saying, ‘But he’s always been nice to me,’ when I’m raising valid concerns about artists and their rights to own their music. And of course he’s nice to you. If you’re in this room, you have something he needs.

The fact is that private equity is what enabled this man to think, according to his own social media post, that he could buy me. But I’m obviously not going willingly. Yet the most amazing thing was to discover that it would be the women in our industry who would have my back and show me the most vocal support at one of the most difficult times, and I will never, ever forget it. Like, ever.”

Using multiple barometers employed by music industry investors, Billboard estimated in February 2020 that the price of Swift’s first six albums was anywhere from $400 million to $450 million, roughly double what Braun paid for them three months prior.

In April 2020, Swift informed her fans via Instagram stories that her “former label is putting out an ‘album’ of live performances of mine tonight.”

“I’m always honest with you guys about this stuff so I just wanted to tell you that this release is not approved by me,” Swift continued of the project, Live From Clear Channel Stripped 2008. “It looks to me like Scooter Braun and his financial backers, 23 Capital, Alex Soros and the Soros family and The Carlyle Group have seen the latest balance sheets and realized that paying $330 MILLION for my music wasn’t exactly a wise choice and they need money.

“In my opinion…Just another case of shameless greed in the time of Coronavirus,” the star concluded. “So tasteless, but very transparent.”

Ye, at the time still known as Kanye West, went on a tweeting spree in September 2020 proclaiming that “all artists must be free” and referring to the music industry as “modern day slavery.”

He then brought Swift’s dispute with Braun into the discussion. “I’M GOING TO PERSONALLY SEE TO IT THAT TAYLOR SWIFT GETS HER MASTERS BACK. SCOOTER IS A CLOSE FAMILY FRIEND,” the rapper tweeted.

In August 2019, Swift told Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts when exactly she’d be able to start legally rerecording her old music. “Yeah, that’s true and it’s something that I’m very excited about doing, because my contract says that starting November 2020 — so next year — I can record albums one through five all over again,” she said at the time. “I’m very excited about it. I just think that artists deserve to own their own work. I just feel very passionately about that.”

Sure enough, on the first day of November 2020, Swifties took to social media to celebrate with the hashtag #TaylorIsFree.

According to a note Swift posted to Twitter on Nov. 16, 2020, and confirmed to Billboard by a source, Shamrock Holdings purchased the star’s Big Machine Label Group catalog from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings. The sale marked the second time in 17 months ownership over Swift’s first six albums had changed hands.

Swift posted to X that once Braun decided to sell her masters, his “team” had asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement before she could even “bid on [her] own work.” “My legal team said that this is absolutely not normal, and they’re never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off,” she added at the time. “He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me.”

She also wrote that she’d originally been open to a partnership with Shamrock after the sale went through, but ultimately decided against it after learning that Braun would “continue to profit off my old musical catalog for many years” under the new terms. “Scooter’s participation is a non-starter for me,” she added in her post.

On April 9, 2021 — nearly two years after Swift first called out Braun for the sale of her masters — the pop star dropped Fearless (Taylor’s Version), the first of her six planned re-records. Complete with never-before-heard Vault tracks and collaborations with other artists, the project was a massive success and ended up topping the Billboard 200 for two weeks.

“This process has been more fulfilling and emotional than I could’ve imagined and has made me even more determined to re-record all of my music,” she wrote in a note to fans prior to the album’s release. “I hope you’ll like this first outing as much as I liked traveling back in time to recreate it.”

In June 2021, Braun reflected on the immediate aftermath of his acquisition of Swift’s catalog in an interview with Variety. “I regret and it makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” he told the publication. “All of what happened has been very confusing and not based on anything factual.”

“I don’t know what story she was told,” he continued. “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.”

Swift soon followed up Fearless with Red (Taylor’s Version) in November 2021. In addition to topping the Billboard 200, the project earned Swift her eighth No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 with “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which also set a record by dethroning Don McLean’s “American Pie” for longest song to top the chart.

Braun again reflected on his dispute with Swift in a 2022 interview with MSNBC. “When I was buying [Big Machine], I actually said to that group, ‘If at any point [Swift] wants to come back and be a part of this conversation, please let me know, because I wouldn’t do this deal,’” he said. “I was shown an email — which has now been made public now — where she stated that she wanted to move on that negotiation and wasn’t interested in doing that deal anymore.”

The mogul later continued, “I think Taylor has every right to re-record. She has every right to pursue her masters, and I wish her nothing but well, and I have zero interest in saying anything bad about her. I’ve never said anything bad about her in the past, and I won’t start to now. The only thing I disagree with is weaponizing a fanbase.”

While speaking to NPR in September 2022, Braun opened up about the “important lesson” his experience with Big Machine and Swift taught him: “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,” he said.

The entrepreneur went on to emphasize how important it has been for him since the debacle with Swift to make sure he has conversations with everyone involved ahead of major business moves — something he says he didn’t have the chance to do when purchasing Big Machine, as he was under a strict NDA that forbade him from contacting any of the artists on the label’s roster before the sale.

“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 added to NPR. “And I made that assumption with people that I didn’t know.”

The third album in Swift’s discography became her third re-release on July 7, 2023, with the pop star unveiling Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) a couple months after announcing it at an Eras Tour show. The LP spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

When Swift dropped 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in October 2023, it quickly became her most successful re-record to date. Spending six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the LP was the star’s first to outperform its original counterpart in first-week sales, taking home 1,359 million in comparison to 1989‘s 1.287 million in 2014.

While speaking to TIME for her 2023 Person of the Year interview, Swift said that her dispute with Braun was one of two springboards for where her career is now (the other being her feud with Ye and Kim Kardashian).

“With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion,” she told the publication at the time. “I was so knocked on my a– by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold. I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’”

Swift also described the situation with Braun has “having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.” “My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things,” she added. “Keep making art … But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.”

Five years after their feud first exploded into the public eye, Braun turned some heads by posting about Swift on his Instagram Story. Sharing a TMZ article about the pop star’s beach vacation with boyfriend Travis Kelce, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, the businessman wrote, “How was I not invited to this?!? #laughalittle.”

Just before that, he also posted about watching Max’s documentary about their feud — Taylor Swift vs Scooter Braun: Bad Blood — which had premiered two months prior. “I finally watched it…,” he simply wrote, sharing a screenshot of the project’s poster.

“You’d think after his previous posts about her he’d learn by now,” an industry source told Billboard of Braun’s activity at the time. “It’s like he’s obsessed.”

After Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential election, Republican opponent Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”

In response, Braun reshared the twice-impeached ex-POTUS’ post on Instagram Stories and wrote, “Shake it off Donald … Kamala 2024.”