Scott Borchetta, the man who sold Taylor Swift’s catalog in a $300 million deal to Scooter Braun, says the singer has been misleading about the situation, claiming she had the chance to purchase her work and knew well ahead of time of the deal.
Borchetta, 56, who founded Big Machine Label Group, posted an open letter on the label’s website, claiming the songstress had a shot earlier at buying the work, which fell through when she inked a pact with Universal Music Group last November.
The music industry exec shared text exchanges and documents linked to their business dealings spanning from last November up until this month.
The 29-year-old singer revealed on Sunday that she was sad and grossed out that her masters now belonged to Braun who she accused of subjecting her to years of incessant and manipulative bullying.
Braun’s Ithaca Holdings announced earlier that day that it was acquiring Big Machine Label Group, which released all of Swift’s studio albums and owns her masters, in a $300 million deal.
In a scathing Tumblr post, Swift said she only learned of the sale Sunday when she woke up and it ‘was announced to the world’.
The latest: Scott Borchetta, 56, the man who sold Taylor Swift’s catalog in a $300 million deal to Scooter Braun, says the singer has been misleading about the situation, claiming she had the chance to purchase her work, and knew well ahead of time of his deal with Braun
Borchetta issued his own lengthy statement accusing the singer of being misleading about the situation, claiming she knew well ahead of time about the deal with Braun.
‘So, it’s time for some truth… In regard to a post earlier today from Taylor, it’s time to set some things straight,’ he wrote in an open letter on the Big Machine Label Group’s website.
‘Taylor’s dad, Scott Swift, was a shareholder in Big Machine Records, LLC. We first alerted all of the shareholders on Thursday, June 20th for an official shareholder’s call scheduled for Tuesday, June 25th.
Bad mix: Swift said in a Tumblr post that Braun, snapped last month in Nashville, acquiring her catalog was her ‘worst case scenario’
‘On the 6/25 call the shareholders were made aware of the pending deal with Ithaca Holdings and had 3 days to go over all of the details of the proposed transaction. We then had a final call on Friday, June 28th in which the transaction passed with a majority vote and 3 of the 5 shareholders voting ‘yes’ with 92% of the shareholder’s vote.’
Borchetta said he texted Swift at 9.06pm on Saturday as a courtesy to inform her of the deal prior to news breaking.
‘I guess it might somehow be possible that her dad Scott, 13 Management lawyer Jay Schaudies (who represented Scott Swift on the shareholder calls) or 13 Management executive and Big Machine LLC shareholder Frank Bell (who was on the shareholder calls) didn’t say anything to Taylor over the prior 5 days,’ he wrote.
‘I guess it’s possible that she might not have seen my text. But, I truly doubt that she ‘woke up to the news when everyone else did’.
Swift’s representative later doubled down on how she found out about the deal after it was implied that her father, Scott Swift, had know about the deal for at least a week.
Initial reports suggested that Swift’s father was on the record label’s board of directors but her representative later clarified that he was a shareholder.
Taylor Swift denied that her father Scott (above) was involved in the deal that saw her music catalog sold off to Scooter Braun as the pop star insists she found out about the $300 million sale with the rest of the world
Accord: Borchetta and Braun posed together at a private home in Montecito, California on Friday
Bringing the receipts? Borchetta outlined the terms of what he called an ‘extraordinary’ offer to Swift which would have kept her at Big Machine Records and given her ownership of her material, posting documents of the offer he made
‘Scott Swift is not on the board of directors and has never been. On June 25, there was a shareholder phone call that Scott Swift did not participate in due to a very strict NDA that bound all shareholders and prohibited any discussion at all without risk of severe penalty,’ her rep told DailyMail.com.
‘Her dad did not join that call because he did not want to be required to withhold any information from his own daughter.
‘Taylor found out from the news articles when she woke up before seeing any text from Scott Borchetta and he did not call her in advance.’
In his post, Borchetta also denied Swift’s claims that she wasn’t given the opportunity to purchase her work.
He outlined the terms of what he called an ‘extraordinary’ offer to Swift, which would have kept her at Big Machine Records and given her ownership of her material, but it fell through when she inked a pact with Universal Music Group last November.
‘Taylor had every chance in the world to own not just her master recordings but every video, photograph, everything associated to her career. She chose to leave,’ he wrote.
He went over their interactions during the critical time period in which she switched labels.
‘Taylor and I then talked through the deal together,’ he said. ‘As you will read, 100 percent of all Taylor Swift assets were to be transferred to her immediately upon signing the new agreement. We were working together on a new type of deal for our new streaming world that was not necessarily tied to ‘albums’ but more of a length of time.’
Borchetta said he and Swift ‘remained on very good terms’ throughout the negotiation process, and upon her pact with Universal.
In a scathing Tumblr post, Taylor Swift said she only learned of the sale Sunday when she woke up and it ‘was announced to the world’
Swift had earlier shared this screenshot of Bieber’s August 2016 Instagram post in which he’s he’s Facetiming Braun and Kanye West as proof of Braun’s bullying tactics
Justin Bieber has leapt to the defense of his manager Scooter Braun in response to Taylor Swift’s Tumblr post denouncing his purchase of all her old music masters
Swift left Big Machine and signed with Universal Music Group back in November because she says she knew that re-signing with the group that had managed her since she was 15 would only result in her not owning her future work.
‘When I left my masters in (Big Machine Label Group founder Scott Borchetta’s) hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them,’ she said on Sunday.
‘Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter.’
She claimed Braun got two clients, including Justin Bieber, to bully her online about a leaked and illegally recorded snippet of a phone call she had with Kim Kardashian. She also referenced when Kanye West, a Braun client, organized a ‘revenge porn music video which strips my body naked.’
Swift said that Braun had ‘stripped her’ of her life’s work that she ‘wasn’t given an opportunity to buy’.
‘My musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it,’ she said.
Borchetta said he was not aware of Swift’s passionate feelings about Braun but did know of her discord toward’s the manager’s superstar client, Bieber.
‘As to her comments about ‘being in tears or close to it’ anytime my new partner Scooter Braun’s name was brought up, I certainly never experienced that,’ he said.
‘Was I aware of some prior issues between Taylor and Justin Bieber? Yes.
‘But there were also times where Taylor knew that I was close to Scooter and that Scooter was a very good source of information for upcoming album releases, tours, etc, and I’d reach out to him for information on our behalf. Scooter was never anything but positive about Taylor.’
He said Swift twice passed on Braun’s offers to include her in shows he organized following the Manchester bombing in 2017 and the Parkland, Florida school shooting in 2018.
Scooter Braun’s wife Yael Cohen, 32, came to his defense after Taylor Swift, 29, and others criticized his purchase of her old label, which gives him ownership of her music master recordings
Braun’s wife, Yael Cohen, also chimed in on Instagram refuting Swift’s claim that she found out the news with the rest of the world
He posted both text exchanges from Swift’s departure from his label last November; and a message he sent her Saturday.
In Swift’s message dated November 19, she wrote, ‘Owning my masters was very important to me, but I’ve since realized that there are things that mean even more to me in the bigger picture. I had a choice whether to bet on my past or to bet on the future and I think knowing me, you can guess which one I chose.’
In the message he sent her Saturday, Borchetta advised Swift that the Wall Street Journal was going to report news of the Braun merger, adding, ‘I wanted to pass along to you the same courtesy that you passed along to me in regard to my future.’
Representatives for Braun did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Justin Bieber apologized to Swift late Sunday for a 2016 Instagram post in which he was seen with Braun and Kanye West – the post she accused him of sharing as a way to bully her.
But Biever went on to defend Braun who he says ‘didn’t have anything to do with it’ and has her back. He also questioned why she would use social media to attack Braun, saying she knew it would prompt her fans ‘to hate on’ the music manager.
‘Hey Taylor. First of all i would like to apologize for posting that hurtful instagram post, at the time i thought it was funny but looking back it was distasteful and insensitive..,’ Bieber wrote.
‘I have to be honest though it was my caption and post that I screenshoted of scooter and Kanye that said ‘taylor swift what up’ he didnt have anything to do with it and it wasnt even a part of the conversation in all actuality he was the person who told me not to joke like that.. Scooter has had your back since the days you graciously let me open up for you.!
‘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.’
Braun’s wife, Yael Cohen, also chimed in on Instagram refuting Swift’s claim that she found out the news with the rest of the world.
‘Your dad is a shareholder and was notified and Borchetta personally told you before this came out,’ Cohen alleges.
‘My husband is anything but a Bully.’
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