Clearly not a true Swiftie, Scooter Braun thought he and Taylor Swift would have a totally pleasant relationship after he bought her former record label, Big Machine, back in 2019. Had he been a true fan, he would have known that crossing Swift is not something you want to do (see: “Picture to Burn,” “Better Than Revenge,” all the songs on Reputation that aren’t about Joe Alwyn). Braun owning Swift’s label, and thus all of her music, sparked one of the great celebrity feuds of all time, which recently came to an end when Swift bought back her catalogue. Six years later, Braun has gone on the record to say he really didn’t expect all the ruckus.
“When I bought Big Machine, I thought I was going to work with all the artists,” Braun said on a new episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast. “I thought it was going to be an exciting thing. I knew Taylor; she and I had only met three or four times. And one of the times, years earlier, it was really a great engagement. She invited me to her private party, we respected each other, we had a great engagement.”
“In between that time since I’d seen her last, I started managing Kanye West. I managed Justin Bieber. I knew she didn’t get along with them,” Braun continued. “I had a feeling — this is where my arrogance came in — I had a feeling she probably didn’t like me because I managed them. But I thought that once this announcement happened, she would talk to me, see who I am, and we would work together.”
What actually happened, as most of us know by now, is that Swift shared a letter on Tumblr accusing Braun of “incessant, manipulative bullying,” specifically condemning his support of Kanye West during their 2016 beef. “Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,” Swift wrote at the time. “Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
Not exactly the warm, respectful welcome Braun was hoping for. A year after buying Big Machine, Braun sold Swift’s masters to the private equity firm Shamrock Capital, which recently sold them back to Swift for a reported $360 million. Following the sale, Braun gave a stirring statement to “Page Six”: “I am happy for her.”
Back on the podcast, Braun said that he now views that chapter of his life as “a gift.”
“Having that experience allows me to have empathy for the people I worked with who I would always say, ‘Yeah, I understand.’ But I never knew what it was like to be on the global stage like that. I never knew what criticism like that felt like,” Braun said. “The biggest gift I got from that was understanding that all the praise I had received up until that moment was not deserved. All the hate I got after that moment was not deserved, because none of these people knew me.”
Seems like things worked out for everyone involved. Braun learned that having a “great engagement” with someone one time does not mean that they’ll be cool with you buying their life’s work, Swift got her masters back, and now the fans can listen to the superior version of 1989 with impunity.