Scooter Braun Says He ‘Learned an Important Lesson' After Taylor Swift Feud

The record executive acquired the rights to Swift’s studio albums in 2019, which deepened an ongoing feud between the two

Manager to the stars Scooter Braun, left, criticized Taylor Swift in a recent interview, claiming that the megastar "weaponized" her fanbase against him during their public feud over Swift's old catalogue.
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Scooter Braun has been in a very public feud with Taylor Swift for several years, and he's ready to tell his side of the story.

The record executive recently sat down with NPR for a new interview, and he opened up about the feud that still has many of Swift's fans buzzing to this day.

In case you’ve somehow escaped all the drama, Braun’s company acquired Swift’s former label, Big Machine Records in 2019. Consequently, the record executive then held the rights to Swift’s first six albums. After the news broke, Swift responded by saying he had been “bullying” her for years.

While chatting with NPR, Braun was asked if he would handle the acquisition in a different manner if he could go back in time. And he acknowledged that there was something he would change if he could.

“Yes, I would have. I learned an important lesson from that,” the 41-year-old said.

In his interview, Braun explained that he was under a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) while he was negotiating with Big Machine Records, and said that affected how much he was able to say about the deal before it closed.

While interacting with the record agency's owner, Braun claims he learned that Swift had no interest in her masters.

“What I told him was, hey, if any of the artists want to come back and buy into this, you have to let me know. And he shared a letter with me that’s out there publicly that — you know, the artist you’re referring to said, I don’t want to participate in my masters. I’ve decided to, you know, not make this deal, blah, blah, blah. So that was the idea I was under," he said.

According to Swift, though, she did want to acquire the rights to her masters. However, Big Machine said she could only do so by staying at their agency and slowly earning the rights to each album with every new album she recorded from there on out. Ultimately, she turned that offer down and left for a new record agency.

Braun asserts that he was "excited to work with every artist on the label" and had started making phone calls after the deal closed to tell artists he was a part of it.

"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. 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," he said.

Braun went on to describe the one thing he regrets about the whole situation.

"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," he said.

Rather than subscribe to the conflict, Braun is choosing to focus on the future.

"What I’m going to do is I’m going to learn from it. I’m going to move on," he said.

In 2020, Braun sold the rights to Swift's masters and Swift set herself to work re-recording her original albums. In 2021, she announced that she would be focusing her attention on redoing her second album, “Fearless,” first. Up next came her album "Red."

In August 2022, the singer also announced that she will be releasing her latest album, a new work titled "Midnights" in October.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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