Scott Swift made $15 million on the sale of his daughter's music catalog.
Taylor Swift's music catalog sale is in the spotlight once again. After Music Business Worldwide published a report claiming that Taylor's dad, Scott Swift, made $15 million on the highly-publicized sale of her music catalog to Scooter Braun, a source tells ET that the elder Swift was unaware of the planned action, despite any profit he made from it.
A source close to the negotiations tells ET that the drama began 48 hours before Scooter's purchase of Scott Borchetta's Big Machine Label Group was made public in 2019. The source notes that since Scott Borchetta controlled 90 percent of the stock, the sale, which reportedly rang in at $300 million, was a forgone conclusion.
The source tells ET that Taylor's dad didn't have knowledge of the deal before it happened and intentionally skipped a private, NDA-signed phone call about a potential deal, so that he didn't have to withhold anything from Taylor.
Taylor's rep reiterates as much, telling ET, "There was a shareholder phone call that Scott Swift did not participate in due to a very strict NDA that bound all shareholders and prohibited any discussion at all without risk of severe penalty. Her dad did not join that call because he did not want to be required to withhold any information from his own daughter."
Since news of the deal broke, Taylor has blasted it, claiming that she wasn't told about Scooter's purchase before it became public and was never given a chance to buy her music, an allegation that Scott Borchetta has denied.
Taylor has long stuck to her story, though, and now her rep tells ET, "Taylor found out from the news articles when she woke up before seeing any text from Scott Borchetta, and he did not call her in advance."
In the wake of the drama, Taylor announced that she would rerecord her first six albums in an effort to own her music. She has since released the "Taylor's Version" of Fearless and Red, and is set to put out her version of Speak Now on July 7. She has yet to announce release plans for rerecords of her self-titled debut album, which came out in 2006, 2014's 1989, or Reputation, which was released in 2017.
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