LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) – The news yesterday (June 30) that Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group was being sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings for $300m certainly caused a stir across the music industry. Now, less than 24-hours after Taylor Swift penned a strongly-worded open letter calling out Braun and her former record label, Borchetta has weighed in.
In a statement posted to the BMLG website, Borchetta claims that Swift misrepresented how things went down between them and that her assertion that she was unable to regain ownership of her master recordings was false. He wrote: “Taylor had every chance in the world to own not just her master recordings, but every video, photograph, everything associated to her career. She chose to leave.”
In her post, Swift, who described the sale of her masters to Braun as being beyond her “worst nightmares,” claimed that she’d been trying to gain control and ownership over her master recordings “for years” but that she was instead only “given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time,” in exchange for every new one she turned in. The singer — who left Big Machine Records for United Music Group late last year — also claimed that she only found out that Braun’s holding company had bought Big Machine, and thus owned her masters, on Sunday morning “as it was announced to the world” despite her father, Scott Swift, being a minority shareholder in the company.
Borchetta claims that BMLG first alerted all of its shareholders to the possibility of the sale on June 25th and that “out of courtesy” to Taylor he personally texted her June 29th to inform her prior to the story breaking on the morning of June 30th. He went on to share the text message he sent the singer as well as past exchanges and the details of Swift’s previous contract negotiations prior to her departure from Big Machine Records.
So, it’s time for some truth…
In regard to a post earlier today from Taylor, it’s time to set some things straight.
Taylor’s dad, Scott Swift, was a shareholder in Big Machine Records, LLC. We first alerted all of the shareholders on Thursday, June 20th for an official shareholder’s call scheduled for Tuesday, June 25th. On the 6/25 call the shareholders were made aware of the pending deal with Ithaca Holdings and had 3 days to go over all of the details of the proposed transaction. We then had a final call on Friday, June 28th in which the transaction passed with a majority vote and 3 of the 5 shareholders voting ‘yes’ with 92% of the shareholder’s vote.
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.
I guess it might somehow be possible that her dad Scott, 13 Management lawyer Jay Schaudies (who represented Scott Swift on the shareholder calls) or 13 Management executive and Big Machine LLC shareholder Frank Bell (who was on the shareholder calls) didn’t say anything to Taylor over the prior 5 days. 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”.
I am attaching a few very important deal points in what was part of our official last offer to Taylor Swift to remain at Big Machine Records. Her 13 Management team and attorney Don Passman went over this document in great detail and reported the terms to her in great detail.
Taylor and I then talked through the deal together.
As you will read, 100% of all Taylor Swift assets were to be transferred to her immediately upon signing the new agreement. We were working together on a new type of deal for our new streaming world that was not necessarily tied to ‘albums’ but more of a length of time.
Continue reading the letter HERE.
