Kanye West's former manager Scooter Braun now controls Taylor Swift's back catalog, and she's pissed
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Back in November, Taylor Swift announced that she was leaving her old record label Big Machine for a sweet deal with Republic Records and Universal Music Group that included a special clause about UMG’s artists getting the money if/when the label sells its shares in Spotify. It was a big win for Swift, since it let her take a shot at the music streaming platform she hates, but it signaled an end to an extremely lucrative relationship for Big Machine—which apparently makes 80 percent of its revenue from the rights it controls to Swift’s first six albums. Apparently, though, the split was more contentious than it seemed, with Swift revealing now that she had tried fighting Big Machine for a chance to control her own master recordings but was denied, forcing her to accept that Big Machine would someday sell its catalog to someone else, thereby giving some new person control of Swift’s old music.
That has now happened, and Swift is real pissed about the buyer that Big Machine founder Scott Borchetta went with. As reported by Billboard, Borchetta has sold Big Machine to Ithaca Holdings as part of a $300 million deal, giving control of the Big Machine catalog—and those first six Taylor Swift albums—to Ithaca’s founder: former Kanye West manager and Justin Bieber mastermind Scooter Braun. Today, in a post on Tumblr (embedded below), Swift explained why she’s so upset about this, saying, “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.”
As Swift goes on to point out, Scooter Braun was there when Kanye West made his “Famous” video, with its naked Swift lookalike and lyric about how West thinks he and Swift might end up having sex because “I made that bitch famous.” Braun was also there when Kim Kardashian recorded Swift talking to West on the phone about “Famous,” seemingly giving her approval for the whole stunt, and Braun was also there when Kardashian released that recording and turned it into a whole big thing to make Swift look like a hypocrite for being publicly mad about the song and video. Basically, the big feud that Taylor Swift has been in with West and Kardashian for years is at least partially this guy’s fault, and he now owns the rights to every album that she’s made since she was a teenager (save for the upcoming Lover, which will be her first on UMG) including the album that was partially about the feud.
In perhaps the most vicious part of Swift’s post, she makes it clear that Borchetta is just as guilty here as Braun, saying he knew how she felt about him and how it would make her feel for him to own her catalog. “He knew what he was doing; they both did,” she wrote. “Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.” She says she will “always be proud” of her previous work, but refers to Lover as a “healthier option.” Swift recently buried the hatchet with Katy Perry, but this one might not be so easy.
113 Comments
That is too fucking funny.
Much as I’m not a fan of hers for my own reason, I WILL say that the US’s copyright and IP laws are currently FAR too exploitative of creators for corporate gains, ie the people who have *NOTHING* to do with the actual creations they’re hocking while seeing the majority of the profits of said creations.Read: it’s little more than a repaint of the age-old ‘ownership’ of creators that the aristocracy of Europe used for centuries to stay fat, lazy, happy, rich, and useless. And, oh, hey…that’s exactly what it’s doing in the US, too.
Swift was quite welcome to fund, release and promote her first six albums herself. Oh, she didn’t have the massive amounts of money needed for such an expensive business venture, and needed SOMEONE ELSE to take the risk? Well honey, that’s just how things work in the real world. The one that takes the most risk is due the most gain.
A person on the side of the music industry. Named Shilly, no less.
Huh.
That’s definitely a pretty shitty thing to do but also the entire music industry is such a clusterfuck of garbage people being garbage assholes. Her first few albums were probably made with a ridiculously tight contract so I can understand why she wants control over all her work.
Just ask Paul McCartney.
The lawyers couldn’t stop me
These two comments deserve all of the stars.
All of them.
The correct answer is: “Slaugh-slaughterin them pockets, had to tie her ass to a rocket”Come back again tomorrow for another chance to win the UGK/OutKast Lyric Challenge!
As someone who’s been in the industry for way too long I take a offense at this, I’m only a jerk not a garbage asshole.
Scooter Braun is a relevant and telling example of that exact problem, though. Like, this isn’t a celebrity feud, no one’s buying tickets to see Scooter Braun or buying Scooter Braun merch and the only aspect of it that is distantly related to that kind of feud is something he stirred up in what is now ancient history from the perspective of entertainment news.Instead, this story is a powerful illustration of a pretty important issue, detailing exactly how people’s work gets punted into a chemical toilet by capitalism and stamped on by a bunch of suits in jean shorts.
So you wanna be a rock and roll star?
Just get an electric guitar. And take some time, and learn how to play.
How aboutGettin’ hadGettin’ tookI’ll tell you, folksIt’s harder than it looks
In his defense, Scooter changed a lot after losing everything when the Muppet Theater closed.
Again?
What happened to your sister huh Scooter?
This amuses me greatly for some reason.
Maybe she’ll spin this into another 3 albums.
Well this is gonna get messy fast. Can’t help but feel bad for her but the music business is full of this kind of shenanigans.
Sadly, it has been for decades, just look up the pile excrement named Morris Levy.
I smell a song.
Can’t unsee the memes of Tay-Tay wholesale ripping off Beyonce’s live show. This seems like a really poor fight to pick.
What did she rip off from Beyonce?
Her Coachella act.https://www.google.com/search?q=taylor+swift+beyonce&oq=taylor+swift+be&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.11860j0j9&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8I don’t mean to be curt by posting search results, just hoping to illustrate that a LOT of people saw the same thing.
Having a marching band? I prefer articles over YouTube videos, whole bunch came up a first, and I read a few and skimmed them. I’m primarily picking up on marching band similarities, is there more?
The side-by-sides are pretty convincing.https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/05/02/entertainment/taylor-swift-billboard-music-awards-performance-beyonce/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
I don’t think that article is helping out your argument here. It doesn’t really provide convincing examples and includes this tweet –
I dunno, I think that photo really speaks for itself.
Wait, is this like The Dress? Do you see one of those people decked in blue?
They are not.
Oh, sorry.
You know who else used marching bands?Schools. So Beyoncé ripped off schools.
The upshot of all this is that I’m really in the mood for some Anathallo.
“If this is any one other than Steve Allen you’re stealing my bit.”
And Fleetwood Mac!
One of my favorite uses of a drum line pre Beyonce Coachella, post Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Gwen Stefani obviously, is Woodkid because it’s super stylized. He does very pretty visual stuff.
The lights are extraordinary. Who’s the dumb guy in the hat?
Unfortunately that’s the artist. He’s really good creatively and has great music videos which he chooses not to feature himself in.
I don’t mean to harsh him personally but his presence is… weirdly jarring in an otherwise great performance.
Enjoy this, then erase your memory of Nick Cannon in Drumline.
TUSK
In Beyoncé’s defense, schools were just ripping off that Fleetwood Mac song “Tusk”.
You know what else used marching bands?TUSK!
The EU’s in good hands.
So both Beyoncé and Taylor ripped off Prince’s Super Bowl halftime set, except without the giant penis guitar? I’m cool with that.
Oh wow, you have to stretch really hard to see that.
So Beyoncé owns like… everything now? Including marching bands? Maybe Gwen Stefani saw the future when she used marching bands back in 2005. Beyoncé should sue that bitch, how dare she?!
Love Angel Music Baby…
No Kim Kardashian owns the trademark on Kimono now.
i both don’t like swift and think this is pretty shitty
Yes. This is actual adulthood. Welcome!
Same. It’s a weird spot to be in. It’s how the industry works, though, and at least she made fucktons of money. It’s not like she signed away ownership and someone else profited, which happened to a lot of artists back in the day.
Oh, interesting. There’s somebody on this planet named “Scooter Braun.”
There’s also someone out there called Speed Weed
Yeah. he may have the money and her catalog, but he also has the horror of waking up every morning and remembering he’s called “Scooter”. Can’t say I’d trade my life for his.
Is there anything more predictable than Taylor Swift handling something not going her way melodramtically and VERY publicly.
I’m sure Scooter Braun is garbage, but also, did Swift not give her approval for the “Famous” video on that phone call and then get mad about it publicly later? And did she offer more than $300 million to buy Big Machine’s catalog?
Tswift is hella rich but I doubt she has 300 mil in cash sitting in her bank account
…and neither does Scooter Braun. He’s not paying cash for the company.All this is a non-sequitur though. In a just world, Swift wouldn’t have to come up with $300MM to own the music she created.
She tried buying her masters but they wouldn’t sell them to her outright.
I’m sure she did, but the rest of the Big Machine catalogue becomes much less valuable separated from the Taylor Swift recordings. Why not form a partnership with your new label to combine funds and buy the catalogue? It’ll pay for itself eventually. There are dozens of people in the business she could have partnered with to purchase the catalogue.Or she could complain about people being mean to her. Whatever works.
This! The article is oddly pro Taylor and doesn’t bring up that West told her it was joke and he would change it if she was offended. She said no it’s hilarious then went on and said she never knew and he’s abusing her.
It’s a Barsanti article, which means always going for the most mainstream, lukewarm views. He woulda fit right in with the io9 crowd.
In her defense the recording only had her agreeing to… something. Never heard what was said on the other endTaylor Swift is annoying but I ain’t taking Kim Kardashians side on most things.
There was never any audio released in which West played the track for her as it was released and got the OK for it. No audio of them discussing that specific verse either. The Kardashian’s “smoking tape” was a dud.
Also, there’s a huge different between lyrics and someone hiring an artist to make an anatomically correct lifelike figure of you that they then get into to bed with in their music video.
“The Kardashian’s “smoking tape” was a dud”Not the most successful tape the Kardashians have released
to be fair to her, the call between kanye and taylor was about the lyric in famous – “i made that bitch famous” – not the video (where a wax replica of her appears in the nude), which was made after she publicly decried the song. supposedly the previous line – “i feel like me and taylor might still have sex”- was not cleared in that phone call, which is why she was mad, and the videos kim posted don’t make it totally clear what taylor knew about.
It was the other way around. She thought the “might still have sex” line was funny, but didn’t know it was followed by “I made the bitch famous.”
Other way around…clearance for “might still have sex” not “made that bitch famous”… number one is a silly boast, number two is a man taking credit for a much younger woman’s success, and calling her a bitch in the process.
She gave approval for the line “I feel like me and Taylor still might have sex”, which is a lot different than approving, “I made that bitch famous”, when Swift is famously in control of her own career. It sucks that the narrative so quickly went in support of Kim Kardashian after she released that tape – like, Kim Kardashian is supposed to be cool or something??
Yeah Taylor Swift is no innocent, but in the battle of Kardashian v Swift, I’m gonna have to go Swift.
Scooter now owns Cheap Trick’s most recent albums as well.
AKA “the one’s I’ve never heard.”
Was it cheap?
I have an ex named Scott who voluntarily allowed himself to be called Scooter. I never did. Also, the music industry needs to be burned to the ground.
Starting with UMG!
She needs to calm down**Not really, she has every right to be furious. I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that.
The entertainment industry: one of the only places left on earth where you think you have fuck you money and then somebody comes along with SERIOUS Fuck you Money and big times your ass back down a few pegs.Also… c’mon… the feminist bent is laughable. She signed away those rights for gobs of money years ago. If she wanted to fight the patriarchy, she could have released everything she wrote herself and been a real big deal on the live bar music scene in Nashville.
She was a teenager man, they aren’t known for thinking long term, hence the regrets.
You know who wasn’t a teenager? Her parents and her lawyers. She went in whole hock for the pop star life, now she has buyer’s remorse.
I mean, there was no way she could get label support without a contract like that because the music industry is shitty, it seems more like she hates the person who owns them now and the fact they never gave her the chance to buy them herself beforehand.
Plus, the guy who sold them knew she hated the guy who bought them. There’s business, but that shit seems personal.
So because she had parents, she wasn’t a teenager? What?
Her father, who had done well in finance, would have been the one to sign the contract.
Yeah. Obviously. What does that have to do with her right to be upset about the terms of the contract? It’s just further proof that she had little say in something she now has to live with forever.
Instead of being a martyr, online, she should direct her ire at her father.
Oops. Should’ve asked you, I guess.
What would be the point of that? She actually has power online. It’s why PR is a thing.
She did have say. Contracts with a minor are unenforceable. The instant she turned 18 she could have done as she liked.
Contracts with a minor are completely enforceable. How exactly do you think child actors get paid?
I think her anger was directed towards the fact that she wasn’t given the option to buy her masters, but to “earn” them one-by-one for each new album she turned in. Also, in the contract that Borchetta released, it doesn’t guarantee her the right to buy the Masters; it leaves it over to Big Machine. It seems like she walked away from a contract that didn’t value the hours she put in. Furthermore, Big Machineis now owned by a man who orchestrated a lot of the Kanye West shit, and he has access to the entirety of her work so far. I don’t think anyone was trying to negate the previous contract, but the fact that she wasn’t given the option to buy her masters is kind of a dick move on Big Machine’s end.
OK, but then your position is still “Fuck her because of things her parents and lawyers did.” Don’t you see the problem there?
If Scooter offered the most money, though, should Big Machine have said, “Sorry, Scoots, you hurt Tay Tay’s feelings so we’re going with a lower bidder”? And maybe Scooter bought the catalog to spite Swift. But at the same time, I imagine it’s a great investment to make. Sure, it’s shitty for Swift, but these are business people making a deal that they think will make them the most money. Not everything is centered around being a dick to Tay Tay.*If Swift or even anyone else, offered more money than Scooter, then this is totally about being a dick to Tay Tay.
This is all pretty wretched (especially since most of Scooter’s prize ponies, like Ariana and Justin, seem to have been broken into pieces mentally, which makes me automatically see the worst of him), although the completely unnecessary and persistently self-involved responses from Demi Lovato at least gave me a few laughs. She’s well on her way to Linda Granger land (one of my favorite Tracey Ullman characters).
At first I was on the verge of being sympathetic, but seeing how this is that’s been happening since before i was born, I’m going to just ask: Why the hell don’t these young, powerful artists at the top of their celebrity influence actually do something to stop this cycle from continuing?
I’m plenty sure that there are other young women facing the same lopsided contract negotiations, so why doesn’t she approach them and support them into getting a better deal? She can complain about bullying all she wants, but until there is an actual change, she might as well help others and their situation instead.
But then again, caring about the fortunes of other women would require her to apologize to Beyonce for constantly stealing her material.
everyone involved sucks!
Too bad? Her father, who worked in finance, would have signed the contract, so it’s not like they took advantage of a little girl. Just because you’re now a big star doesn’t mean you get to change the deal.
Ah, but she is not her father, young padawan.
Aulas Goiania
Aulas e cursos em goiania.Venha conhecer.
Bitch, please.
Lots of people commenting too bad, she should be pissed at her father, etc are missing the point. She makes clear she knew that her catalog would be sold someday, and had made peace with it. What’s setting her off is that it’s being sold to someone who clearly has messed with her in the past, and who she has clearly made known she hates. To sell it to this man is just malicious on the part of the previous catalog holder. There’s business, but the guy who sold it to someone she clearly hates (when I’d be surprised if there wasn’t another buyer for a comparable price) is just horrible. You can keep it purely business without being shitty.
I mean with how (figuratively) incestuous the music industry is, that’s just life.
Nothing changes unless you call it out.
I take Bieber’s response with a large grain of salt, given that his entire output is worthless.
Money has no emotions or allegiance and business generally has no room for those things either. Selling it to someone else because the top bidder is someone Swift hates would be just as wrong as selling it to Braun solely to piss her off.
Money has no emotions or allegiance because it’s an inanimate object. Business is run by people. Welcome to the world, it’s a shitty place because people justify shitty decisions by saying its business, not personal. Anyway, more sides and information about this story have come out, so it’s much more complicated than how Swift was presenting it (surprise surprise).
Possibly…..However, I’m pretty sure you lose much of your right to whine when you just buy a house next to the Kennedy’s place for $30 million because you feel like dating one for a hot second. She is close to billionaire status.I think she’ll survive. Some people can dance, other people tell them when to.I blame Jimmy Fallon…that seems about right.
Maybe she can write a mean breakup song about it
Who knew Kanye worked with so many slave masters?
Taylor has to be worth more than 300 million could she not purchase the label herself?