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Why do Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun have bad blood? Feud EXPLAINED
Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun feud began when Braun bought rights to the Big Machine Record Label. Here’s everything you need to know.
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Scooter Braun bought all the rights to Taylor Swift’s masters she created with Big Machine label
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Taylor Swift called Braun 'manipulative' and a 'bully'
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Taylor Swift decided to re-record her albums and gain rights to her music
Generally, record company deals don’t trend on social media, but when Taylor Swift is involved, there’s a different scenario. In 2019, Scooter Braun bought Big Machine Records, and with that, he also bought six of Swift’s albums. Swift began her career as a musician at Big Machine Marker when she was 15, and she stuck around till 2019. However, she switched to Universal Music Group’s Republic Record in a largely publicized deal. Before switching label companies, Swift expressed her interest in buying all her previous music, but she was denied the right to do so, and instead, it was sold to Scooter Braun, and the Blank Space singer had no rights to her own music.
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Swift shared a Tumblr post back then condemning both Borchetta and Braun as poisonous manipulators. "This is my worst-case scenario," Swift wrote in an emotional Tumblr post published later that same day. She called Braun an "incessant, manipulative bully" who possessed all of her masters. On social media, the response to Swift’s Tumblr post has been heavily divisive. Swift’s sympathizers, including musician Halsey, had tweeted under the hashtag #WeStandWithTaylor, saluting Swift for her amenability to speak out against assiduity numbers as important as Braun's trouble covering her work and her art.
What exactly happened between Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun?
It all began when Scooter Braun bought the Big Machine Record label. In Swift’s case, that meant the master recordings of songs like You Belong With Me and others on every platform from YouTube to Spotify were sold to him. What’s more important is that retaining the rights to her master recording meant retaining the right to make, vend, or distribute clones. Anyone who wants to make a dupe of the recording must ask for authorization from the proprietor of the master rights. And now, those rights belong to Scooter Braun.
This meant that if someone wants to certify You Belong With Me so that they can put it on a television show, in a movie, or in an announcement, they need to get Braun’s authorization, and they need to pay him a figure. Traditionally, record companies enjoy an artist’s master's. Swift has still pushed hard against that policy. When she switched record companies last fall, one of the conditions of her move was that going forward, she'd want to buy her masters, meaning she'd have sole rights over how and where her music was used. But that deal only applied to her new material, starting with this year’s forthcoming albums.
However, her previous masters, as in all the music she made before 2018, will still remain at Big Machine Label Group.
What does the feud between Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun mean?
There are many ways of interpreting Swift’s decision to publicize this incident back then. But it really means that the Blank Space singer really believed that Braun bullied her and Borchetta betrayed her, that she was outraged by the dilemma in which she found herself, and she made it public because she thought it was the right way to resolve it.
However, it clearly appeared to be true that Borchetta presented Swift with the news of the trade as a done deal without giving her an option to buy her master's rights. According to Borchetta’s account of the timeline, Swift’s surrogates were notified of the deal only when the time came for a shareholder vote, and he didn't tell Swift directly until after the deal was perfected. It also seemed to be true that Braun at the very least helped work on a music videotape that included Swift’s raw likeness without her authorization. Swift may not be correct about Braun's claim that he tried bullying her on social media or about the particulars of the deal Big Machine offered her, based on what’s been made public.
She presumably would have appreciated the chance to try to head off the deal behind the scenes. It’s also true that Swift is extremely strategic about the way she builds her public image. Swift is presently in the middle of re-recording her previous masters that were sold to Scooter Braun. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon, she revealed that she is recording her albums again to take back the rights to her music, and anything that says Taylor’s Version next to it means she owns it. So far, she has released three of her previous albums, Fearless, Red, and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), with new additional tracks called From The Vault.
Since 2019, Swift has released multiple albums and even went on a tour named Eras Tour, which is a look back at all of Taylor Swift’s albums. The tour is also rumored to become the highest-grossing tour ever. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is currently working on and promoting her fourth re-recorded album, 1989 (Taylor's Version).
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