Scooter Braun “feels a lot of guilt” over young artists he managed, calls Taylor Swift backlash “deeply unfair”

Scooter Braun has said he feels “a lot of guilt” over the young artists he managed, while calling the backlash he suffered over his Taylor Swift feud “deeply unfair”.

The American businessman was once the manager of artists including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Kanye West, Demi Lovato and J Balvin, before officially retiring from management in June last year.

That decision followed a years-long feud that he had with Swift, which erupted when Braun’s company Ithaca Holdings LLC acquired Swift’s old label Big Machine in 2019 for $300million. That purchase gave him control of the masters of Swift’s first six albums, which she called “the worst-case scenario” while calling Braun out for his “incessant, manipulative bullying”. She subsequently re-recorded four of the albums in “Taylor’s Versions”.

Now, Braun has appeared on Steven Bartlett’s The Diary Of A CEO podcast, where he reflected on his time as a major music industry manager. “At this age, I feel a lot of guilt,” he said. “I feel a lot of guilt because I worked with so many artists and like I told you, I hadn’t taken the time to look at myself or do the therapy myself until I was older.

“So I didn’t understand at 25 years old, at 27 years old, at 30 years old, that they each were coming from very unique backgrounds of their own stuff with their own families and their own childhoods and growing up this way, and being seen by the whole world.”

He went on to say that he would now ensure that all of the artists under his management would have access to mental health support while on tour.

“I’m very proud of the job that we did and how much we cared and how much the team cared for all the years that we did it,” Braun explained. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t look back and wish that I knew what I know now. I think I would have had a therapist on the road for all of us.”

He also addressed the Swift feud, saying: “When I bought Big Machine, I thought I was going to work with all the artists on Big Machine. [Taylor] and I had only met three or four times. One of the times, it was years earlier, it was really a great engagement. She invited me to her party. We respected each other.”

“In between that time since I’d seen her last, I started managing Kanye West,” he continued. “I managed Justin Bieber. I knew she didn’t get along with them. This is where my arrogance came in. I had a feeling she probably didn’t like me because I managed them, but I thought once this announcement happened, she’d talk to me, see who I am, and we’d work together. Then this Tumblr comes out, and it says all of this stuff, and I was just shocked.”

Braun later sold Swift’s catalogue to the private equity company Shamrock Holdings in 2020. “I couldn’t fix the relationship that I didn’t have, but then I was able to figure out, ‘You know what? We’ll sell it’,” Braun added.

“In the world of streaming, the re-records will only help the old catalogue as much as they help the new catalogue. Both will get a bump. I showed how everyone can be a winner here, and I was able to sell the catalogue and – I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it’s now come out very factually that I did offer it [to Swift] … multiple times in that process. They said no, I sold to someone else, washed my hands of it and moved on.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

At the time of that sale, Swift disputed this, writing on X that “these master recordings were not for sale to me”. In recent weeks, she revealed that she had bought back the masters for the first six albums, saying “all of the music I’ve ever made…now belongs…to me.”

“All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy,” she added.

“I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. The way they’ve handled every interaction we’ve had has been honest, fair and respectful.

“This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: my memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams. I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”

The dispute was the subject of Max’s two-part documentary, Taylor Swift vs Scooter Braun: Bad Blood last summer, and Braun said later in the year that “it’s time to move on”, while claiming that “a lot of things were misrepresented” in the doc.

He has also expressed regrets about how he handled the situation, saying in 2022: “I learned an important lesson from that. I think a lot of things got lost in translation. I think that when you have a conflict with someone, it’s very hard to resolve it if you’re not willing to have a conversation.”

Bieber also publicly unfollowed Braun on social media in January after reports in recent years that tensions had grown in their relationship. Prior to Braun’s retirement last year, Grande, Lovato, David Guetta, Black Eyed Peas and Carly Rae Jepsen had all also parted ways with him.

The post Scooter Braun “feels a lot of guilt” over young artists he managed, calls Taylor Swift backlash “deeply unfair” appeared first on NME.