Taylor Swift says she was manipulated and ‘stripped of her life’s work’

Taylor Swift berated the selling of her master recordings yesterday in a Tumblr post that called out the buyer, talent manager Scott ‘Scooter’ Braun, as a calculating bully who has deliberately intimidated her throughout her career.

“I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world,” Swift said in her post, “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.” 

She added: “Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it”

Scott Braun has acquired Big Machine Label Group, the owners of Swift’s masters. Scott Borchetta, who sold the recordings to ‘Scooter’ Braun, responded to Swift’s message today in a statement on Big Machine Label Group’s website: “In regard to a post earlier today from Taylor, it’s time to set some things straight,” he said.

He says that he texted Swift the news of the sale before it broke publicly: “Out of courtesy, I personally texted Taylor at 9:06pm, Saturday, June 29th to inform her prior to the story breaking on the morning of Sunday, June 30th so she could hear it directly from me.” He adds: “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’.”

Borchetta adds that Swift had “every opportunity” to buy all of her own music, claiming that Big Machine Label Recordings offered her a new record deal that would give her 100 per cent ownership of all her master recordings, videos, and photographs. But Borchetta claims that, instead, “she chose to leave.”

Justin Bieber has also weighed in on the Scooter-Swift beef, saying that the country-pop singer had crossed a line by accusing the talent manager of bullying. “I usually don’t rebuttal things like this but when you try and deface someone i loves character that’s crossing a line,” Bieber said in an Instagram post.

He added: “Scooter has had your back since the days you graciously let me open up for you.! As the years have passed we haven’t crossed paths and gotten to communicate our differences, hurts or frustrations. So for you to take it to social media and get people to hate on scooter isn’t fair.”

A spokesperson for the singer-songwriter refuted Borchetta’s claim that her dad was made aware of the sale of Big Machine Label Recordings as part of a shareholder call. They said in a statement to People Magazine “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.”

The statement adds: “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.”