When Taylor Swift first slammed Scooter Braun in a Tumblr post heard ’round the world, nobody was prepared for one of the biggest feuds in music history to unfold over the coming months — much less the reverberations it would cause in the industry for years afterward.
Though officially beginning in 2019 — when the pop star first put former label boss Scott Borchetta on blast for selling her catalog to the SB Projects founder — the story actually starts over a decade prior, when Swift was simply a 15-year-old aspiring singer-songwriter. In 2005, she inked her first record deal with then-new Nashville company Big Machine Records, signing over the ownership of her first six studio albums’ masters.
Thirteen years later, Swift wanted out. After her deal with Big Machine ended, the Grammy winner signed a new contract with Republic Records in 2018. And though she made sure to thank Borchetta “for guiding me through over a decade of work that I will always be so proud of” in an Instagram post announcing the transfer, Swift also made a pointed allusion to why she’d decided to leave: “It’s also incredibly exciting to know that I’ll own all of my master recordings that I make from now on. It’s really important to me to see eye to eye with a label regarding the future of our industry.”
It would only take a few months for the diplomacy to end, with Borchetta selling Big Machine — including Swift’s catalog — for upwards of $300 million in June 2019. On the same day, the “Shake It Off” singer came forward with a scathing statement taking issue not just with her former business partner for selling her work to someone else, but to whom exactly he’d sold it: Braun. As it turned out, Swift wasn’t exactly a fan of the music manager — who is known for representing Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and more — and their subsequent feud would go down in history books and inspire ongoing conversations about artist rights, private equity and the value of re-releasing music for years to come.
From Braun’s fateful purchase to Swift’s Taylor’s Version re-recording project, a lot has happened in the clash of these two music industry titans. Keep reading to see a detailed timeline of how everything played out below.
