"I can’t put myself in a place of, you know, arrogance to think that someone would just be willing to have a conversation and be excited to work with me."
Scooter Braun Admitted He Should’ve Done Things Differently Regarding Buying Taylor Swift’s Master Recordings
Scott “Scooter” Braun — the big-time talent manager of artists such as Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and J Balvin — said he regrets how things went down with the Taylor Swift catalog acquisition.
“I learned an important lesson from [the Big Machine acquisition]. I told myself this time around, everyone is going to participate. Everyone’s going to know,” he said. “When I did that deal, I was under a very strict NDA with the gentleman who owned it, and I couldn’t tell any artist. I wasn’t allowed to. I wasn’t legally allowed to.”
In the letter Scooter is referring to, Taylor made it clear she did not want involvement with Scooter. “For years, I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work,” she said. “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. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to.”
But Scooter was optimistic. “I was excited to work with every artist on the label. So when we finalized the deal, I started making phone calls to say, hey, I’m a part of this. And before I could even do that — I made four phone calls; I started to do those phone calls — all hell broke loose. So I think a lot of things got lost in translation,” he said.
“I think that when you have a conflict with someone, it’s very hard to resolve it if you’re not willing to have a conversation. So the regret I have there is that I made the assumption that everyone, once the deal was done, was going to have a conversation with me, see my intent, see my character, and say, great, let’s be in business together. And I made that assumption with people that I didn’t know,” Scooter added.
“And I learned an important lesson from [the Big Machine acquisition]: that I can never make that assumption again. I can’t put myself in a place of, you know, arrogance to think that someone would just be willing to have a conversation and be excited to work with me. I don’t know these people.”
Scooter has since sold the catalog, and Big Machine was acquired by South Korean music and entertainment group Hybe. “When I did the deal with Hybe, I took 50 million of my own stock that I received, and I gave it to my employees and my artists,” he said. “And I made sure that everyone participated significantly.”
He added, “So I choose to look at it as a learning lesson, a growing lesson, and I wish everyone involved well. And I’m rooting for everyone to win because I don’t believe in rooting for people to lose.”
For now, it looks like everyone’s winning, so maybe there will be peace.
Listen to the entire interview here.