Scooter Braun Still Confused By Taylor Swift Feud
Over the past decade, much has been said (and sung) about Taylor Swift’s “feud” with Scooter Braun. And even though it sounds like we’ve heard it all, Scooter continues to call out misconceptions.
For a quick reminder, during Taylor’s infamous beef with Kanye West in 2016, Scooter was the rapper’s manager. We don’t know exactly how involved Scooter was in the whole Taylor/Kanye drama, but, at the height of the controversy, Justin Bieber posted a screenshot of a FaceTime call with Scooter and Kanye on his Instagram page. In this photo, Scooter and Kanye were laughing, and JB wrote the caption, “Taylor swift what up,” which, if you’re Taylor, didn’t feel right.
Three years later, in 2019, Taylor’s former manager Scott Borchetta sold his record label, Big Machine Records, to Scooter’s company, Ithaca Holdings, for $300 million. This meant that Scooter would profit from the sales and use of all the music Taylor released with Big Machine during his 10-year contract with them, which, as I’m sure you know, included his first six albums.
Given Scooter’s ties to Kanye and that whole situation, Taylor wasn’t happy with the sale of the Big Machine. In a lengthy Tumblr post at the time, Taylor said that Scott selling to Scooter was “his worst case scenario,” and went on to say that Scooter had “robbed” him of his life’s work that he “wasn’t given the opportunity to buy.”
Scooter – who ended up selling Taylor’s catalog to Shamrock Holdings for more than $300 million in October 2020 – has said more than once that when he got the big machine, he thought it meant he would be working with all the artists the label put together. “I thought it would be interesting,” he said over the music Diary Of A CEO podcast in 2025.
Instead, Taylor embarked on a well-documented career re-recording her classics, making arrangements for “Taylor’s Version” I’m afraid, Red, Speak Now, again 1989. While doing so, he labeled Scooter as his “nemesis” along the way, releasing a number of snarky tracks that fans believe are about him.
So, now that it’s all said and done, and Taylor is the proud owner of his OG masters, too, Scooter has opened up about being seen as the bad guy in the story. “[I] went from being like, loved and appreciated for over ten years to being a villain the next night,” he told Suzy Weiss when he recently appeared. Second Thought podcast, where he sets the record straight about the true nature of his relationship with Taylor.
“I’m going to say something that will really sum it up that I don’t know that I’ve ever really said: I don’t know Taylor Swift. I think I’ve met her three times in my life. I’ve never had a meaningful conversation with her in my life,” he said. “Me, one time I was invited by him to a private party. He told me he respected me a lot. I told him I respected him a lot. You don’t spend $300 million on a label unless you enjoy the opportunity to work with him. I can’t really understand that situation, to this day. I wish him the best.”
Scooter said he learned “an enormous amount” from what he was doing and chose to “grow from it.” He said: “I’m thankful for this moment in my life. “But I think there’s this huge misconception that, like, we knew each other, and we had this rivalry and, like, I treated him for years. And people are often shocked when they find out that officially I don’t know him and I haven’t had much interaction with him and I’ve never really known him.”
“And as I said,” he continued, “I think I met him three times in my life, and I think I spoke to him exactly once for more than two minutes. But it was a very pleasant conversation. And besides, nothing ever happened. And then three years before we bought the big machine, he and I had never communicated. I think it was two years. The party was like two years before or three years before, so communication with me has never been confused in my entire life. as it is but I choose to study and growing from it.”
Scooter said that one of the good things that will come out of this situation is that we increase the knowledge of other artists by managing their music. “Most, until now, these kings are still managed by labels,” he said. “As confusing as it is [the situation was] to me, I think it was very clear that artists are starting to want to own themselves, and I think you’re seeing a lot of artists doing that, and I think that’s great.”
