Taylor Swift wants her ownership rights back. On June 30th, 2019 news broke via Swift’s social media accounts that Scott Borchetta had sold Big Machine Label Group (BMLG), including all of Swift’s past six albums’ masters. Scott sold all of this to Scooter Braun, who used The Carlyle Group to help buy it for $300 million. This was heartbreaking for Swift, who said in a Tumblr post: “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.” (Swift, 2019). She also states in this Tumblr post that Scooter, along with his client Justin Bieber, has bullied her in the past during other drama; this was unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg of the Scott and Scooter vs. Taylor fight.

On November 14, 2019, Taylor Swift posted a long open letter on her social media accounts. She started off by saying that she is being honored with the Artist of the Decade award at the American Music Awards on November 24th. She further says: “I’ve been planning to perform a medley of my hits throughout the decade on the show. Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun have now said that I’m not allowed to perform my old songs on television because they claim that would be re-recording my music before I’m allowed to next year.” (Swift, 2019). Taylor announced earlier in the year that she is legally allowed to re-record her previous six albums so that she can own them. She also said: “Additionally - and this isn’t the way I had planned on telling you this news - Netflix has created a documentary about my life for the past few years. Scott and Scooter have declined the use of my older music or performance footage for this project.” (Swift, 2019). On November 15th, BMLG issued a formal statement regarding Swift’s post. They claimed: “At no point did we say Taylor could not perform on the AMAs or block her Netflix special. In fact, we do not have the right to keep her from performing live anywhere.” (BMLG, 2019). While it’s true that they can’t keep Taylor from performing live at all, they aren’t allowing her to perform her old songs. Since leaving BMLG, she released her newest album Lover on August 23rd. Swift’s publicist Tree Paine released another statement after BMLG did. The statement says: “In addition, yesterday Scott Borchetta, CEO and founder of BMLG, flatly denied the request for both AMAs and Netflix. Please notice in Big Machine’s statement, they never actually deny either claim Taylor said last night in her post.” (Paine, 2019).

At the end of her November post, Swift asked her fans to: “let Scott and Scooter know how you feel.” (Swift, 2019). That day, a Change petition started by a fan gained traction and garnered more than 100,000 signatures (and counting!). She was also given support by celeb friends Selena Gomez, Halsey, Cara Delevigne, Camilla Cabello, and more. She was even given political support by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren. So far, a possible resolution for the award show issue is to get other recording artists to cover her old tunes at the show. Hopefully, this issue will be more formally resolved quickly.