Scooter Braun made a profit of $265m from buying & selling Taylor Swift’s masters

Scooter Braun made a profit of $265m from buying & selling Taylor Swift’s masters

Nearly three years after selling Taylor Swift’s masters, new documents have confirmed just how much money Scooter Braun’s former company Ithaca Holdings made off the deal.

Ithaca Holdings originally acquired Swift’s catalog in June 2019, valued at $140 million. The purchase was a part of the company’s $330 million acquisition of Big Machine, the label that signed Swift in 2005 when she was just 16 years old.

According to a detailed report from Music Business Worldwide, Ithaca allegedly sold Swift’s original recordings at the end of 2020 for $360 million to a capital firm named Shamrock with the possibility of earning another $45 million depending on the performance of Swift’s first six albums in the years following the sale.

A 2023 Q1 report reveals Braun’s company received the maximum payout of $45 million from the deal, which means they made a total of $265 million.

The bad blood between the music industry powerhouses began after the pop star concluded her record deal with Big Machine in 2018 and promptly jumped over to Universal Music Group.

UMG gave her a more artist-friendly deal and the opportunity to own her masters from that point on. At the time, she thanked Scott Borchetta, the original owner of Big Machine.

However, the two wouldn’t remain on good terms. Big Machine sold Swift’s masters to Braun and Ithaca Holdings in 2019. Swift claimed the deal happened without her knowledge or consent and she was not given a fair chance to purchase the original recordings of her first six albums, even citing that she “pleaded” with Borchetta for the “chance to own my work.”

She alleged that the only condition Big Machine offered her was if she earned back the rights to each of her first six albums one by one, with every new record she produced with the label. Swift declined the offer. “I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future,” she explained.

The “Karma” singer then aired out the drama on social media, publicly accusing Braun of “incessant, manipulative bullying.”

Following Swift kicking the beehive, Ithaca opted to sell Swift’s masters to Shamrock, though experts were unsure how viable owning Swift’s catalog would still be. The $45 million dollar contingency earned suggests sales and streams of Swift’s first six albums are still doing well, despite Swift’s mission to re-record said entries.

Swift is currently gearing up to release Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) on July 7. It will feature recordings of the sixteen original tracks alongside new songs from the vault that feature Fall Out Boy and Paramore’s Hayley Williams.

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