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Taylor Swift didn’t get advance warning of Big Machine deal from Dad

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 2 July 2019

It seems like everyone in the world has now expressed an opinion about artist manager and well known (alleged) bully boy Scooter Braun acquiring the entire recordings catalogue of Taylor Swift through his purchase of the Big Machine record company.

My Uncle Derek reckons it’s yet another example of talented artists being screwed over by the “big machine”. By which I think he means the music industry at large. As in, Big Machine is simply part of the big machine. And to not even inform poor Swifty that her recordings catalogue was being bought by Braun’s Ithaca business? That’s just shameful!

But, my Aunt Marge counters, that Swift should just stop all her moaning and recognise how fucking lucky she is to have built a global audience and made millions of dollars thanks to the hard work of people like Big Machine boss Scott Borchetta. Her dad would have told her about the Ithaca deal anyway. And it’s just so unfair to lay into Braun and his top pop buddy Justin Bieber on the social networks.

It’s been quite a day at by Uncle Derek and Aunt Marge’s place, I can tell you. Divorce proceedings are due to begin at lunch time.

Though, hang on everybody, there’s on update on one aspect of the Big Machine big deal big fallout story. On Sunday Swift claimed that she only found out about Braun acquiring all her master recordings that morning when the story broke in the news media. Borchetta countered that he’d given her ample advance warning by, erm, texting her on Saturday night. Which does make keeping Swift in the loop seem like a major after-thought.

Except that Borchetta then pointed out that Swift’s dad Scott was a shareholder in Big Machine, so had been consulted about the sale before it went through. The Big Machine chief wrote: “We first alerted all of the shareholders on Thursday 20 Jun for an official shareholder’s call scheduled for Tuesday 25 Jun”.

“On [that] call”, he went on, “the shareholders were made aware of the pending deal with Ithaca Holdings and had three days to go over all of the details of the proposed transaction. We then had a final call on Friday, 28 Jun in which the transaction passed with a majority vote and three of the five shareholders voting ‘yes’ with 92% of the shareholder’s vote”.

Swift Senior, therefore, must have known about the deal and would surely have told Taylor, right? No, not at all, said a spokesperson to People magazine yesterday.

“Scott Swift is not on the board of directors and has never been”, they said. “On 25 Jun, there was a shareholder phone call that Scott Swift did not participate in due to a very strict NDA that bound all shareholders and prohibited any discussion at all without risk of severe penalty. Her dad did not join that call because he did not want to be required to withhold any information from his own daughter”.

And as for Borchetta’s very late in the day text? She didn’t see it. “Taylor found out from the news articles when she woke up before seeing any text from Scott Borchetta and he did not call her in advance”, the spokesperson concluded.

So that’s that settled. Aunt Marge is yet to comment. Though in light of this new information, I suspect Uncle Derek will get the house.