She called out 'toxic male privilege' in the music industry in her acceptance speech
The feud between Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun is showing no sign of a resolution.
As you may know, Swift has taken umbrage at the fact that Braun (who manages Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, amongst others) and his business partner Scott Borchetta bought the company (Big Machine) that own the rights to most of her back catalogue, before she was given a chance to.
When it looked like she may not be able to sing songs from that back catalogue at the AMAs last month, she told fans what was going on and urged them to share their feelings with Braun. That resulted in - according to Braun - death threats being made against his family. He released an open letter to Swift a few weeks ago calling on her to sit down and sort the matter out privately.
However, Swift took the opportunity to blast the music manager while being awarded the 'Woman of the Decade' at Billboard's Women in Music Awards last night.
She criticised the 'unregulated world of private equity' buying artists' music "as if it’s real estate—as if it’s an app or a shoe line.”
She continued:
"This just happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent. After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and that Carlyle Group. Yet, to this day, none of these investors have bothered to contact me or my team directly—to perform their due diligence on their investment. On their investment in me. To ask how I might feel about the new owner of my art, the music I wrote, the videos I created, photos of me, my handwriting, my album designs.
"And of course, Scooter never contacted me or my team to discuss it prior to the sale or even when it was announced," she added. "I’m fairly certain he knew exactly how I would feel about it, though, and let me just say that the definition of toxic male privilege in our industry is people saying “but he’s always been nice to me” when I’m raising valid concerns about artists and their right to own their music. And of course he’s nice to you—if you’re in this room, you have something he needs.
"The fact is that private equity enabled this man to think, according to his own social media post, that he could “buy me.” But I’m obviously not going willingly. Yet the most amazing thing was to discover that it would be the women in our industry who would have my back and show me the most vocal support at one of the most difficult times, and I will never, ever forget it. Like, ever."
Looks like she's not going quietly on this one.
Braun, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the latest development.