Scooter Braun Reveals 'Regret' About How He Handled Taylor Swift Catalog Purchase

While speaking on The Limits with Jay Williams, Scooter said he wishes he could have dealt with the acquisition differently.

“I learned an important lesson from [the Big Machine acquisition],” he said.

“When I did that deal, I was under a very strict NDA with the gentleman who owned it, and I couldn’t tell any artist,” he said, indirectly referring to Big Machine owner Scott Borchetta.

“I wasn’t allowed to. I wasn’t legally allowed to. What I told him was, hey, if any of the artists want to come back and buy into this, you have to let me know. And he shared a letter with me that’s out there publicly that – you know, the artist you’re referring to said, ‘I don’t want to participate in my masters. I’ve decided to, you know, not make this deal,’ blah, blah, blah. So that was the idea I was under,” he continued.

“I was excited to work with every artist on the label. So when we finalized the deal, I started making phone calls to say, hey, I’m a part of this. And before I could even do that – I made four phone calls; I started to do those phone calls – all hell broke loose. So I think a lot of things got lost in translation. I think that when you have a conflict with someone, it’s very hard to resolve it if you’re not willing to have a conversation. So the regret I have there is that I made the assumption that everyone, once the deal was done, was going to have a conversation with me, see my intent, see my character and say, great, let’s be in business together. And I made that assumption with people that I didn’t know,” Scooter went on to say.

“And I learned an important lesson from that, that I can never make that assumption again. I can’t put myself in a place of, you know, arrogance to think that someone would just be willing to have a conversation and be excited to work with me.”

“So I choose to look at it as a learning lesson, a growing lesson, and I wish everyone involved well. And I’m rooting for everyone to win because I don’t believe in rooting for people to lose,” he later concluded.

Find out what Taylor Swift said about the situation at the time.