Huge news from Taylor Swift -- and no, it’s not a Travis Kelce ring alert ... she now owns her entire music vault, after striking a deal to buy it back from a financial firm.
00:00Little did we know, Taylor Swift had something cooking.
00:03Everyone thought that it was going to be the reputation, Taylor's version, the album, was going to come out.
00:09Nope. What she had cooking was way bigger than that.
00:13She has now purchased her entire music catalog.
00:17The thing that has been such a huge issue for her for the last five years,
00:22the fact that she did not own her masters, is now settled.
00:27She bought it from an investment firm called Shamrock Capital.
00:33They bought it from Scooter five years ago.
00:38So this is how what Taylor, she posted this this morning announcing the great news.
00:44She said, I almost stopped thinking it could happen after 20 years of waiting for a carrot dangled and then yanked away.
00:51But that's all in the past now.
00:53Well, I've been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening.
01:00I really get to say these words.
01:02All of the music I've ever made now belongs to me.
01:05So this obviously has to do with her feud with Scooter Braun.
01:12Scooter Braun owned the masters through his company.
01:17For not a very long, about a year.
01:19Not a very long time.
01:21But Taylor Swift has had huge issues with Scooter Braun.
01:24And she has said and insinuated over the years that he would not sell her.
01:32Well, no, what she said was that he swooped in and bought it from Big Machine and she never got the opportunity to buy it.
01:40And she was pissed off about that.
01:42And then once he had it, she wanted to buy it from him.
01:47Now, it turns out that she could have bought it from him.
01:51Could have.
01:52And so the notion that she was pitching was he wouldn't sell it to her.
01:59No, no, no, no.
02:00Yeah, it kind of was.
02:01No, she acknowledged that she felt like she didn't have a real chance to buy it from him because the purchase included a clause in the contract, an NDA, that she had to sign to even look at the financials of Big Machine.
02:18And that clause was a sticking point for her.
02:21She's like, I'm not going to sign that.
02:23But Scooter Braun says that her dad got involved in this, that they had plenty of opportunities to buy it.
02:28The sticking point is that they were negotiating, apparently, but what Scooter wanted was this NDA saying, you won't talk crap on me.
02:37Right, that you or your people will not talk crap on you.
02:40By the way, that's a really standard clause in a lot of this stuff in the music industry.
02:44That is very simple.
02:45She wouldn't sign it and it blew up, but she could have bought it.
02:48It's just, you can't talk crap on him.
02:50And that wasn't good enough, so she said no.
02:52So she didn't get it and then you went and sold it a few months later.
02:54But this notion that they dangled the carrot and yanked it, she just didn't want the terms.
02:57And there's been speculation that Scooter was somehow involved in facilitating this deal with Shamrock.
03:02That is definitely not true.
03:03And sources connected to the deal say that this deal has actually happened in spite of Scooter, not because of him.
03:08So that bitterness is very much still present.
03:10So I have other sources that say Scooter actually advised Shamrock to sell it.
03:17So there are two sides on this.
03:19And, well, I'm not saying I believe one or the other.
03:21I'm just saying that there are different stories.
03:24Whatever it is, we know that Scooter has wanted the world to know clearly that he is happy for Taylor that she now owns all of her masters.
03:35Is this to bless your heart happy?
03:37I feel like...
03:38A little bit.
03:39And this, but, you know, ultimately as upset as she was about it, this is the best thing that ever happened to her.
03:43Because she did the Taylor's version, she sold those, the heiress tour, the fans got protective of her.
03:47And now I guarantee you she will do remastered versions of the original albums.
03:52And she'll just call them Taylor's original remastered.
03:53And she will sell it to them for the third time.
03:56She will make another billion dollars.
03:57She wins.
03:58Uh, hold on, Eric.
04:00You can only go so far until...
04:04And I'm not saying she's done this.
04:06But at a point, it's going to look like you're taking advantage of these fans who are just like cult members in this.
04:12It will look like that to us, but it won't look like that to them.
04:15To them.
04:15They're the ones who are buying it, and that's all that matters.
04:17Hi, it's Sydney calling in from New York.
04:19I am very relieved that Taylor has chosen to not re-record her Reputation album and not have to relive that era.
04:26But, again, I will be buying the re-recording of Debut, her first album, because that would just be so emotional and insane.
04:35And I'm hoping she does it maybe for her 20th anniversary.
