TAYLOR Swift woke up to a nightmare after she discovered that music manager Scooter Braun had acquired master recordings of her old albums.
“Some fun facts about today’s news: 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,“ she wrote on her Tumblr post.
Braun, who manages stars like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, acquired Big Machine Label Group from Borchetta through Ithaca Holdings.
Swift worked with Borchetta from 2006 until she joined Universal Music Group last year.
“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. This is my worst case scenario,“ she wrote.
Swift also shared that she has tried for years to buy her own music from Big Machine but there was a caveat she couldn’t agree to.
“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.”
“I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future,“ she wrote.
American singer-songwriter and choreographer Todrick Hall wrote that he left Braun a long time ago.
“For those asking, I left Scooter Braun a long time ago ... I am saddened by this news, but not shocked. He is an evil person who’s only concern is his wealth and feeding his disgusting ego. I believe he is homophobic & I know from his own mouth that he is not a Swift fan,“ Hall tweeted.
Film and music director Joseph Khan tweeted that it was the “record business at it’s most ruthless and shady”.
Bieber, on the other hand, defended Braun on Instagram,
“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.”
