Scooter Braun's Ithaca Holdings buys Big Machine Label Group for $300 million

This is exactly what I do not understand as someone who actually quite appreciates her as a very talented recording artist. What was her team trying to accomplish with this sort of circular firing squad? She is taking on a lot of people at one time. Let's open up those old wounds with Kanya ( I totally despise what he did with that music video using her naked likeness); Let's take on the new fella that will control all of my old masters indefinitely; And let's also piss off the old guy that helped get me to where I am today, perhaps the most commercially viable recording artist on the planet right now, besides Adele or Ed Sheeran I assume. Did anyone on her whole team really think this whole move out or was this whole public vomiting spit out without much thought?

 

Did the same people mocking Taylor simply because they're not fans of her music feel the same way when Prince went to war with Warner over the exact same thing or when George Michael did the same with Sony? You may argue they're musically superior to Taylor but it ultimately comes down to fighting for the same thing

 

No kidding...

 

Yes, actually.

And you presume I'm not a fan of her music just because I think she's acting petulant here. That's an unfounded presumption.

 

Well you were arguing her catalog has no future value because her star is somewhat declining after the height of 2009-2015 or so. Album sales are in the toilet but her streams are still very strong and there's still some good future earnings left for her IMO. This isn't like how Debbie Gibson owns her masters now considering her old stuff really isn't that valuable to Atlantic anymore

 

I can be a fan of some of her stuff, and also a realist. That's not a contradiction. Some of my favorite artists of all time never sold squat, and they never will. I'd never pay big money to own their catalogs. But that doesn't diminish my appreciation of their art.

I don't see Taylor Swift as a bedrock artist making timeless music that will be devoured in large numbers as albums by future waves of fans who aren't even born yet. That's a judgement call on my part.Once she falls off the pop charts--and I see evidence that that's happening now, albeit slowly--I am unconvinced that new generations will dig to discover her.

That's my view. I could be wrong.

 

A Timeline Of What Happened After Scooter Braun Acquired Taylor Swift's Big Machine Catalog

 

This just reinforces that the music industry is the sleaziest of all areas of entertainment. I am no fan of Taylor Swift. She can't sing her way out of an open grass field. If she blindly signed her rights away, then too bad. However, if she has any legal recourse to get her masters, I hope she succeeds.

 

Her music will hold little value to the next generation.

See the previous Debbie Gibson reference.

 

I'm pretty sure it's Taylor and her marketing team consciously playing to social media in this latest squabble. Standard PR tactics for Hollywood and the music industry these days.

It's not a coincidence that dozens of other female singers are jumping in on social media to support Taylor over this issue. This is all easy to game on Twitter and the like with a few friendly publicists.

 

I don’t think this was thought out or planned. As others have noted, as with Prince writing “slave” on his cheek and starting a self-destructive feud with Warner Bros., or Paul McCartney’s occasional tiffs with Yoko Ono and others over whether the “Lennon/McCartney” writing credit should in fact read “McCartney/Lennon,” that haven’t done Paul much good in the court of public opinion, Swift is wearing her emotions on her sleeve here. You can say she’s dumb or she’s an idiot or her father should have hired better lawyers when she was 14 or her father should have invested in 51% instead of in 3% of the start up record label that turned into a $300 million business, but she’s upset, and I agree with you that her public reaction here isn’t a good PR move on her part. That there’s apparently some sort of pre-existing feud between her and Scooter Braun recalls Paul McCartney’s very public and heated opposition to Allen Klein sticking his paws into the Beatles’ honey pot in 1969/1970. If Borchetta had sold the label to a more boring corporate entity than to Braun, I suspect her reaction, while still not happy, might have been more muted.

 

The Debbie Gibson reference was actually saying the opposite.

 

Taylor is a talented and successful artist, but I'm getting tired at her throwing tantrums when things don't go her way. Every new era has a new drama.

 

Atlantic Records still owns the rights to Debbie's old catalog.

 

Bunch of crybaby celebs. They are all nuts.

 

Taylor Swift's 13 years into her career, still selling out stadiums and "disappointing" people by having two singles only hit #2 back to back. Debbie Gibson was already over three years into her career. 13 years in and she and Tiffany were posing for Playboy to boost attention to a sagging career

I'm not even a Taylor fan but give her some credit. Taylor is an A-list superstar with several blockbusters behind her and even her last "flop" album had a #1, a top 5 and several top 20s, Debbie had two hit albums and by the third album couldn't get in the top 40 album chart and only had one moderate hit single peaking in the 20s.

 

Own your own masters and
own your own publishing, or ..

.. sell your soul to the company,
who are waiting there to sell vibrant air.

 

Taylor also came out of nowhere to become the biggest thing in country, then crossed over to pop and became the biggest artist in that genre with 1989. She’s not going to be forgotten any time soon.

 

Yes indeed, I think that this was part of the problem. I know that when our emotions sometimes get the best of us, we sometimes lash out too quickly or spontaneously, and I think this is an issue that plagues any very powerful and successful mega superstar; They either stop listening to anybody else entirely or surround themselves with a whole lot of sycophants. I hope Taylor still has a friend that she knew back in middle school that she can actually trust or tell Taylor honestly what she really thinks. I think Taylor has been pretty astute on both the marketing and business side of things for such a young person. It is hard to second guess her on her amazing career so far, but as Kenny Rogers once told me, its relatively easy to get to the top of the entertainment business for three or four years, but really hard to stay there longer than that without some amazing luck and skill. Taylor has certainly passed that threshold already.

It is just hard for me to see what the endgame is for Taylor here with regard to the whole fight. My gosh, if the new record deal somehow blew up in everybody's face, would she not be in some jeopardy of being pulled into a potential $300 million dollar legal case. She is going after the guy that is going to control her master recordings for the foreseeable future as well. I call this battling two warfronts at the same time, and I always try to avoid that myself, whenever possible. I guess to her thinking it is all tied together, and I can understand that feeling, but the whole issue with Scooter Braun seems very personal and petty to some degree. I understand her previous beef with Kenya and why it still burns, but it seems like she is taking on lot of people all at once, right after she has taken some heat for her current video that shows some of her previous country fans in a really bad light. I know that was surely not her intention, but once again, if you shut yourself off from people that might give you contrarian advice every now and then, these are the very type of things that can start happening.

 

Right. People used the same "nobody will remember her in five years" thing with Madonna too. Not saying I'm sure 35 years into her career Taylor will be what Madonna is now, but she sure as hell isn't going to be Jody Watley or Taylor Dayne today for sure, she's long eclipsed that

 

I'm doubtful it's the sleaziest - yet, it pays to be prepared in the music industry; in every way possible. The more you rely on others the less you're in control of your own future.

 

I agree that the caricature of anti-gay zealots in her new video struck me as burning a bridge with at least some of her former audience that didn’t need to be burned. I’m all for her supporting gay pride or whatever causes she wants to support, but there are doubtless more positive ways to do that than by stereotyping the people on the other side as toothless rednecks.

 

I am surprised Scooter Braun is an actual person (and the guy who discovered and made a star of Justin Bieber, don't forget this crime against music lol), it sounds like a character off The Dukes Of Hazzard

 

As a gay guy, I kind of understand what she's saying though. Hip hop is even more tolerant to an openly gay star. A few years ago there was an openly gay country singer that emerged named Steve Grand who had a lot of buzz behind him, yet met a total thud in the country world and is essentially relegated to the "Logo" network/pride festival circuit simply because the country world isn't ready for a handsome out gay man in their music. Hell, recently some straight artist did a cover of Cher's Believe for Pride month to show solidarity and got a lot of backlash from the country world because to them it's still 1979 not 2019.

 

Kacey Musgraves has put out a gay friendly message with songs such as “Follow Your Arrow” and “Rainbow” without stereotyping the country audience the way Taylor’s new video does. While I’m sure Nashville has a long way to go, Shane McAnally is openly gay and married, and one of the hottest songwriters in Nashville right now.