In an unexpected crossover feud, Taylor Swift called out the Soros family by name Thursday night, escalating a long-running feud with entertainment executive Scooter Braun.
“I want to thank my fans for making me aware that my former record label is putting out an ‘album’ of live performances of mine tonight,” Swift posted in a heated Instagram story post. “This recording is from a 2008 radio show performance I did when I was 18. Big Machine has listed the date as a 2017 release but they’re actually releasing it tonight at midnight. I’m always honest with you guys about this stuff so I just wanted to tell you that this release is not approved by me. I looks like Scooter Braun and his financial backers, 23 Capital, Alex Soros and the Soros family and The Carlyle Group has seen the latest balance sheets and realized that paying $330 MILLION for my music wasn’t exactly a wise choice and they need money.”
The source of Swift’s spat with Soros is a matter of business, not politics. The superstar, who famously kept her political beliefs to herself for years, has since come out in support of the Equality Act and a number of Democratic candidates. But the Soros family has in fact funded what Swift and plenty of others in the industry call an unethical acquisition of her entire musical legacy.
When Swift first entered the music scene as a teenager, she signed with Big Machine Records, founded by Scott Borchetta. When Swift signed a new record deal with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records in 2018, she secured the unusual stipulation that she would own her master recordings going forward. Masters, the first recording of a song, entitle their owners to authorize or deny any copies made of a track, meaning that Swift could deny, say, a politician or movie she didn’t like from buying the rights to use any song from her latest album, Lover, per the stipulation of her new record deal.
Swift claims that she begged Borchetta to let her buy back her masters, which are usually owned by the label, from Big Machine, but the label would only sell off her records one at a time — if and only if she made additional records for Big Machine. Swift claims that was impossible because she knew Borchetta was selling Big Machine shortly.
The feud entered public parlance after Borchetta instead sold the masters for Swift’s entire discography from 2006 to 2017 to Scooter Braun, which Swift perceived to be a slap in the face not just because she wanted her masters for herself but even more so because of Braun’s association with those who have relentlessly bullied Swift for years.
Braun represents a number of Swift’s haters, but most famously, he represented Kanye West when Kim Kardashian posted selectively edited videos in 2016 implying that Swift lied about not signing off on West’s “I made that bitch famous” line, even though a full recording this year exonerated her.
Evidently, one of the biggest backers of Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, the holding company through which Braun purchased Swift’s masters, is Alexander Soros, son of billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. Swift claims Soros helped fund the purchase of her original records back in 2019, and now, she claims the family has funded the release of her 2008 radio recording in an apparent cash grab to recoup the losses of the initial deal’s colossal price.
So if you see the Soros family trending today, know that it’s not politics. It’s business.
