Taylor Swift Is Not Happy Her Entire Catalog Was Sold to 'Manipulative, Bullying' Scooter Braun
LatestTaylor Swift’s Big Machine catalog has been sold to the man she claims is partially responsible for all the drama that inspired Reputation—music manager Scooter Braun.
According to Rolling Stone, Big Machine sold to Braun’s Ithaca Holdings for $300 million, meaning that Ithaca now owns the rights to Swift’s recordings dating from her 2006 self-titled album through 2017’s Reputation.
In a June 30 Tumblr post, Swift had a whole lot of feelings about the injustice of no longer owning her own music, the way the industry moves the goalposts to keep artists trapped with exploitative labels, and some new-ish tea in her never-ending feud with Kim and Kanye:
“For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. 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 wrote.
She went on to explain that she knew Big Machine would probably sell as soon as she re-upped, which is ultimately why she left the label but said it was especially hurtful to have her music sold to Braun:
“I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years,” Swift wrote. “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. 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.”
It does seem awfully shitty for two men Swift seems to hate to own the music she created over a decade “in perpetuity,” based on a contract she signed at 15 years old. However, in the thirteen years she’s been in this business, Taylor Swift has become one of the smartest players in the game, and this post seems pretty well-timed to bait a response not only from Braun but also from the Kardashian-Wests, which always generates headlines for everyone involved when it comes time to promote new projects.