Taylor Swift Issues New Statement Following Scooter Braun, Scott Borchetta Claims

Taylor Swift’s team is responding after her former record label, Big Machine Records, called her claims that she is being prevented from singing her earlier hits at the American Music Awards “false information.” As the drama between Swift and Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun picked up steam, a representative for the singer on Friday cited an Oct. 28 email from the vice president of rights management and business affairs at Big Machine Label Group.

“Please be advised that BMLG will not agree to issue licenses for existing recordings or waivers of its re-recording restrictions in connection with these two projects: The Netflix documentary and The Alibaba ‘Double Eleven’ event,” the letter sent to Swift’s team reads.

According to the “Lover” singer’s rep, Swift performed three songs off her most recent album Lover, released under Republic Records, as “it was clear that Big Machine Label Group felt any televised performance of catalog songs violated her agreement.”

“In addition, yesterday Scott Borchetta, CEO and founder of Big Machine Label Group, flatly denied the request for both American Music Awards and Netflix,” the new statement reads. “Please notice in Big Machine’s statement, they never actually deny either claim Taylor said last night in her post.”

The statement concluded by denying claims made by Big Machine Records earlier in the day that Swift owes “millions of dollars and multiple assets” to the company.

“Lastly, Big Machine is trying to deflect and make this about money by saying she owes them but, an independent, professional auditor has determined that Big Machine owes Taylor $7.9 million dollars of unpaid royalties over several year,” the statement reads.

According to Variety, the outlet has seen “a document that appears to support her claims about Big Machine denying song use,” though the authenticity of the document could not immediately be verified.

The drama between Swift and Big Machine Records was prompted in July after Scooter Braun acquired the group and with it her entire back catalog of music. Although things seemed to settle in recent months, with Swift promising to re-record her older music once she was able to, the drama was sparked again on Thursday after Swift took to social media with a slate of new allegations.

In a lengthy post, Swift alleged that she was being blocked from using her old songs in an upcoming AMAs performance as well as a Netflix documentary unless she agreed to not re-record her back catalogue in the future and promised that she would stop speaking negatively of the company.