Taylor Swift has spoken out about Scooter Braun’s decision to sell her masters to a private equity company.
The music mogul obtained control of the singer’s masters last year, when his company Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group in June 2019.
But on Monday, Variety reported that Scooter had sold the master rights of Taylor’s first six albums for over $300 million.
After the news broke, Taylor shared a statement on Twitter addressing the sale of her masters.
Taylor claimed that her team tried to enter negotiations to buy her back catalogue from Scooter – but she was allegedly asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which she couldn’t agree to.
She said: “So I would have to sign a document that would silence me forever before I could even have a chance to bid on my own work.”
“My legal team said that this is absolutely NOT normal, and they’ve never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off.”
Taylor claimed they would “not even quote my team a price”, before adding, “these master recordings were not for sale to me”.
Been getting a lot of questions about the recent sale of my old masters. I hope this clears things up. pic.twitter.com/sscKXp2ibD
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) November 16, 2020
The 30-year-old said a private equity company called Shamrock Holdings was the one to purchase her masters – but Ithaca Holdings would still profit off her old music for “many years”.
Taylor told fans that Shamrock Holdings reached out to her last month, with hopes of working together in the future.
But in a letter to the private equity firm, Taylor said: “I simply cannot in good conscience bring myself to be involved in benefitting Scooter Braun’s interests directly or indirectly.”
She wrote: “It’s a shame to know that I will now be unable to help grow the future of these past works and it pains me very deeply to remain separated from the music I spent over a decade creating, but this is a sacrifice I will have to make to keep Scooter Braun out of my life.”
In her statement, Taylor also revealed she’s in the process of re-recording her early albums.
“I have recently begun re-recording my older music and it has already proven to be both exciting and creatively fulfilling,” she said, promising “plenty of surprises”.
