CNN
—
Scooter Braun would like to change the subject.
The music exec particularly would like for people to stop talking about his very public and controversial sale of megastar Taylor Swift’s master recordings, saying that “five years later, I think it’s time to move on” from the topic.
While appearing at Bloomberg’s Screentime event in Hollywood on Thursday, Braun added that after watching the Max docuseries “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” – which was released in June and chronicled the fallout from the sale – he felt there were “a lot of things that were misrepresented.” (Max and CNN are owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.)
“I think that it’s important in any kind of conflict that people actually communicate directly with each other. I think doing it out on social media and in front of the whole world is not the place,” Braun said. “I think when people actually take the time to stand in front of each other and have a conversation, you usually find out the monster’s not real.”
He added that any in-person conversation with Swift “has not happened.”
Braun in 2019 acquired the master recordings of Swift’s first six albums from her former label Big Machine Label Group, despite her objections.
The sale sparked Swift to release a lengthy statement on her social media pages around that time, calling the agreement her “worst case scenario” and announcing her plans to reclaim control over her masters by re-recording the albums that had been acquired.
Swift has since released four of the six albums since 2019, calling them “Taylor’s Version” albums on which she has included never-before-heard songs coined “From the Vault Tracks.”
“I want to own my music and I believe that any artist who has the desire to own their music should be able to,” Swift told her Minneapolis Eras Tour audience last year after releasing “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).”
On Thursday, Braun brought up Swift when he was asked at the Bloomberg event which artist’s career he’d most want to be involved in. To the audience’s surprise – made clear by the audible wave of murmurs and gasps – he name-checked Swift.
“I think the artist that is one that you should always bet on,” Braun said, “and is already a huge star that you can always bet on because they want it all the time and they do what it takes to be present and relevant all the time is Taylor Swift.”
