It was a mega-deal he admitted handling rather poorly.
Music mogul Scooter Braun, whose company Ithaca Holdings, acquired in 2019 Big Machine Records, for $300 million, said he now regrets the way it was done.
At the time, Big Machine, an indie label distributed by Universal Music Group, had Taylor Swift as its top artist.
In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Braun recalled: "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."
The deal included the rights to the masters of Swift's previous six albums. Swift tried, unsuccessfully, to acquire the rights herself.
She then said Braun's owning the master copies of her music was her "worst nightmare." She also mentioned "the incessant, manipulative bullying I've received at his hands for years."
Everything "got lost in translation" Braun said in the NPR interview. "I think 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."
Swift has since rerecorded two of the six albums as Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Red (Taylor's Version).
In 2020, Ithaca Holdings sold the six-album masters to Shamrock Holdings for $300 million.
In April 2021, South Korean company HYBE announced that it will buy Ithaca Holdings from Braun and Carlyle via the subsidiary Hybe America in a deal estimated at $1.05 billion.
Braun became HYBE America's CEO and joined HYBE's board of directors.