Source: Entertainment Weekly
Seven years after Scooter Braun purchased Taylor Swift’s music catalog — a controversial move that fueled the pop star to rerecord her first six albums — he’s now telling “Scooter’s Version” of the story.
In 2019, the music manager paid a reported $300 million for Big Machine Records, Swift’s former longtime label, and with it came the master recordings of all the songs she had recorded before she signed with Universal Music Group.
“Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work,” the singer alleged in a Tumblr post at the time. Accusing him of “incessant, manipulative bullying” during his time working with Kanye West, Swift expressed disbelief that her musical legacy was now “in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
Overnight, Braun says he went from being “loved and appreciated” for a decade as the driving force behind top talent like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande to a villain.
Braun, who retired from artist management in 2024, is now opening up about the infamous saga, one year since Swift bought her music catalog back in May 2025.
“I don’t know Taylor Swift,” he insisted on the Second Thought podcast hosted by Suzy Weiss. “I think I’ve met her in my life three times. I have never had a substantial conversation with her in my life.”
Once, two to three years before he purchased Swift’s catalog, “I got invited to a private party by her,” Braun recalled. “She told me she had the utmost respect for me. I told her I had the most respect for her. You don’t spend $300 million buying a label that she’s on unless you’re excited at the opportunity to work with her.”
Throughout the process of acquiring Big Machine Records, Braun and Swift “never had any contact,” he revealed. So when she then bashed him to her fans in the Tumblr post, he was “just as confused that this is part of my life as you are,” he told Weiss.
Despite being on the losing end of an epic public fallout with the world’s biggest pop star, “I chose to learn and grow from it,” said Braun. “I’m grateful for it at this point in my life.”
To this day, “I will never truly understand that situation,” he added. “I wish her nothing but the best.”
“I learned a tremendous amount from it,” he continued. “I chose to grow from it. I’m grateful for it at this point in my life. But I think there’s this big misconception that, like, we knew each other and we had this feud and I managed her for years. And people are usually shocked to find out that I legitimately don’t know her and didn’t have many interactions with her and never really knew her.”
Swift, as promised, rerecorded four of her first six albums, dubbing each “Taylor’s Version” to note that she solely owned it. While in the middle of 2018’s Reputation, she successfully reacquired her masters in May 2025, bringing an end to the six-year saga.
“I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me,” she announced on Instagram, along with a photo of all six records fanned out in front of her.
“To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it,” Swift gushed. “To my fans, you know how important this has been to me… The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned The Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music. I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now.”
