Scooter Braun insists he didn’t have any "malicious intent" when he purchased Big Machine Records, and acquired Taylor Swift’s back catalogue of master recordings.
The 29-year-old singer slammed the talent manager – whom she had previously accused of "bullying" her – earlier this year when it emerged he had bought her former record label from Scott Borchetta for $300 million, and with it obtained the master recordings she had made whilst under the label.
Taylor claimed she hadn’t been made aware of the deal and wasn’t given a chance to buy back her recordings herself, and branded both Scooter and Scott as "sneaky".
But now, Scooter has said he didn’t plan on hurting Taylor with his purchase, and insisted everything he did throughout the transaction was "above board".
Speaking during an interview with Tony Gonzalez on an episode of the ‘Wide Open’ podcast, he said: "I don’t do anything with malicious intent. I try to do things above board. I try to do the right thing. Not everyone’s gonna be happy with everything that you do, and I think in the long-term, I’ve learned this over time, the truth always comes out, and I’m confident in that."
Previously, the ‘ME!’ hitmaker described the deal as her "worst case scenario", and accused Scooter of trying to "dismantle" her career.
In part of a lengthy Tumblr post that was posted in June, she wrote: "Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it. This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it."
And in an interview in September, she said the transaction was "utterly shocking".
She added: "The fact that those two are in business together after the things he said about Scooter Braun – it’s really hard to shock me. And this was utterly shocking. These are two very rich, very powerful men, using $300 million of other people’s money to purchase, like, the most feminine body of work. And then they’re standing in a wood-panel bar doing a tacky photo shoot, raising a glass of scotch to themselves. Because they pulled one over on me and got this done so sneakily that I didn’t even see it coming. And I couldn’t say anything about it."
Scooter Braun had no ‘malicious intent’ during Big Machine purchase
