Scooter Braun Sells Taylor Swift’s Catalog, Singer Speaks Out
Taylor is fighting for her music.
Taylor Swift is speaking out about the sale of her masters in a new note posted to Twitter on Monday evening (11/16). Earlier in the afternoon, Variety broke the news that the singer’s masters were sold by Scooter Braun, a man she has been in a very contentious legal battle with for close to a year.
In the article, it says that the artist manager sold the rights to her first six albums for a reported $300 million to an undisclosed investment fund. Swift has made that company public in response to the questions she’s received about the purchase.
“As you know, for the past year I’ve been actively trying to regain ownership of my master recordings. With that goal in mind, my team attempted to enter into negotiations with Scooter Braun,” Swift posted to Twitter.
“Scooter’s team wanted me to sign an ironclad NDA stating I would never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive, before we could even look at the financial records of BMLG (which is always the first step in a purchase of this nature.”
She continued by noting that the NDA would essentially quiet her from speaking out against the man she’d previously called out for “incessant, manipulative bullying.”
“I would have to sign a document that would silence me forever before I could even have a chance to bid on my own work. My legal team said that this is absolutely NOT normal, and they’ve never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off. He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me.”
“This was the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge.” Swift continued. “The letter told me that they wanted to reach out before the sale to let me know, but that Scooter Braun had required that they make no contact with me or my team, or the deal would be off.”
In the tweet, Swift also included the letter she wrote to Shamrock Holdings, which explained that while she was excited when they first reached out to tell her about the purchase and hopefully work together, that she could not in good conscience because their company was still connected to Braun.
The feud between the two musical powerhouses has been ongoing over the years, coming to a head when Braun purchased Swift’s old record label, Big Machine Records. She spoke out, noting that she’d tried to negotiate with Scott Borchetta, the label’s founder, in order to gain control of her first six albums.
While negotiations over her catalog failed to give the singer/songwriter control of her music, she did announce her plans to re-record the songs from her first five albums in full during an interview with CBS This Morning.
Braun, Borchetta and Shamrock Holdings have yet to respond to Taylor Swift’s letter as of the publication of this article.
