“When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter,” she wrote. “Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to.”
Scooter has addressed the situation several times over the years, and previously said that he thought it was “unfair” how everything went down so publicly, and that he thought he’d have the opportunity to “be in business” with Taylor.
The music exec ended up selling Taylor’s catalog, including all associated videos and artwork, to Shamrock Holdings for over $300 million in October 2020 — just over a year after he bought Big Machine.
The following month, Taylor issued a statement revealing that she and Scooter’s respective teams had been in negotiations for her to regain ownership of the masters, but she backed out when his team allegedly asked her to sign an “ironclad NDA” stating she would never say another word about Scooter “unless it was positive.”
She went on to explain that while she had been “open” to partner with Shamrock when they initially reached out to her, she was left dismayed to learn that the terms of Scooter’s sale meant that his company would continue to profit from her work.
“As soon as we started communication with Shamrock, I learned that under their terms Scooter Braun will continue to profit off my old musical catalog for many years,” Taylor wrote. “I was hopeful and open to the possibility of a partnership with Shamrock, but Scooter’s participation is a non-starter for me.”
As you probably know, this whole situation led to Taylor rerecording her first six albums — complete with brand new tracks “from the vault” — in order to have ownership of her music, and she only had her self-titled debut and 2016 album Reputation left to re-release when she announced earlier this year that she’d bought the rights to the original master recordings from Shamrock for a reported $360 million.
