Taylor Swift’s father got a lot of money from the sale of the original recording rights!

Last Updated on 06/20/2023 by てんしょく飯

What the hell is going on…?

Taylor Swift’s father has been handed a huge payday in the Taylor Swift master recording rights sale debacle.

It all started in 2019, when businessman Scooter Braun bought Taylor Swift’s label at the time, Big Machine Label Group (BMLG), for $330 million (about ¥46.5 billion) through his company Ithaca Holdings. At this time, Scooter Braun also acquired the master recording rights for six of Taylor’s albums.

On the other hand, Taylor claimed that she was “unaware” that the mastering rights to her albums were being sold. Taylor then launched a major project to re-record her past albums as “Taylor’s Version” in order to re-acquire the original recording rights for herself.

In the meantime, music media outlet Music Business Worldwide reported that the racket had netted Taylor’s father, Scott Swift, as much as $15.1 million (approximately 2.127 billion yen). Scott Swift was a shareholder in BMLG at the time of the sale racket.

While his father was getting a large sum of money, Taylor’s representatives claimed in 2019 that Taylor was not involved in any way and knew nothing about the transaction.

It should be noted that on June 25, prior to the sale of the original recording rights, BMLG held a conference call for all shareholders to sign a very strict non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

According to the agent, Scott Swift did not dare to participate in this conference call. Scott apparently did not participate in this conference call because he did not want to force his daughter, Taylor, to hide information from him through a nondisclosure agreement.

The agent said, “It wasn’t until I woke up the next morning and saw the news article that I learned Taylor had been sold the original recording rights, before I saw the email from Scott Borchetta, the founder of BMLG. He (Taylor’s father) did not call Taylor to let him know in advance,” and as a result, Taylor’s father revealed that he did not inform Taylor himself in advance.

A source added that the sale was a foregone conclusion because the shareholders’ meeting was held only 48 hours before the announcement of the sale to Scooter, and BMLG founder Scott Borchetta controlled 90% of the shares. It also confirmed that Taylor’s father was one of the five shareholders of BMLG, owning about 5% of the company.