Taylor Swift pens scathing post about Scooter Braun

Taylor Swift says she is “sad and grossed out” about the sale of her former record company Big Machine Records — which owns the rights to all the music she released before 2017’s “Reputation” — to music executive and Justin Bieber manager Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings.

“This is my worst-case scenario,” Swift wrote in a Tumblr post after hearing of the reported $300 million deal on Sunday. “This is what happens when you sign a deal at 15 to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value,’ he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.”

Swift said Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta sold to Braun knowing how much it would upset her following her feuds with his artists Kanye West and Bieber, who she says bullied her online. “He knew what he was doing; they both did,” she wrote. “Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever.”

In a post on Big Machine’s website, Borchetta wrote that he “never experienced” Swift being in tears when Braun’s name was mentioned. “Was I aware of some prior issues between Taylor and Justin Bieber? Yes,” he wrote. “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.”

Braun has not commented about Swift’s response to the deal or her desire to have control of her catalog.

“For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work,” Swift wrote. “Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.”

Borchetta responded by posting a photo of what he says was Big Machine’s final offer to Swift that “100% of all Taylor Swift assets were to be transferred to her immediately upon signing the new agreement.” He also posted a text that Swift sent him when she decided to sign with Republic Records, as well as the text he sent her announcing the deal with Braun.

“I want you to know that I will continue to be the proud custodian of your previous works and will continue to keep you and your team abreast of all future plans for releases of you [sic] work,” Borchetta texted Swift.

In her Tumblr post, Swift wrote she is more focused on her future, including the upcoming “Lover” album due out on Aug. 23, which includes the singles “Me!” and “You Need to Calm Down.” “Thankfully, I am now signed to a label that believes I should own anything I create,” she wrote. “Thankfully, I left my past in Scott’s hands and not my future. And hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.”