Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber are at war, after music boss Scooter Braun, who manages Bieber and Kanye West, bought all her music.
Scooter purchased record label Big Machine for $300 million (R4.23billion), which means he owns the masters to her six albums and makes money from every hit she’s made.
Record label manager Scooter Braun's. Photo: Rich Fury/AP
Taylor, 29, wrote on Tumblr: “For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.”
Taylor called Scooter a bully, referring to Kanye’s song Famous, which includes lyrics about wanting to have sex with her in the video.
Then Kim Kardashian shared some of a phone call between Kanye and Taylor on Snapchat at the time, saying it showed Taylor had been consulted about the song before its release.
Taylor denied the conversation took place.
Bieber has since criticised the Shake It Off hitmaker’s comments about Scooter.
“For you to take it to social media and get people to hate on scooter isn’t fair,” he wrote.
“What were you trying to accomplish by posting that blog? Seems to me like it was to get sympathy. You also knew that in posting that your fans would go and bully Scooter.”
Meanwhile, Big Machine founder Scott Borchetta says he contacted Taylor to tell her about the sale on 29 June.
Borchetta claims the superstar singer has changed her tune dramatically.
“Taylor had every chance in the world to own not just her master recordings, but every video, photo, everything associated with her career,” he says.
The feud has caused a rift in the music industry, with singer Demi Lovato batting for Team Scooter and model Cara Delevingne blasting Bieber on social media.