Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening
a file that I have been itching to get into for
a long, long time. It's a story about a figure
who, for the better part of two decades, has
been the invisible hand and sometimes the very,
very visible fist. of the modern music industry.
It's a name that really acts like a Rorschach
test. You know, you say it and people either
see this like brilliant business strategist who
basically invented the modern pop star or they
see the ultimate villain of the artist's rights
movement. There's almost no in between. We're
talking, of course, about Scooter Braun. And
I think the timing for this is just it's perfect
because we're recording this in February 2026.
The dust has, for the most part, finally settled.
It really has. If you've only been reading headlines
on Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it
this week, you might just know him as the guy
Taylor Swift hates. Yeah. Or the guy who discovered
Baber. And that's it. Exactly. And that is such
a surface level reading of what happened. Oh,
completely, because by the time he retired from
artist management back in 2024, he had fundamentally
altered the infrastructure of how celebrity works.
And now, sitting here in 2026, looking at his
corporate role at Hybe, we can actually see the
full picture, the whole arc. And that's our mission
today. Yeah. We are going to move past the memes,
past the Stan Wars. We want to understand the
mechanics. How does a frat boy from Emory University,
who didn't even graduate, by the way, how does
he end up becoming a billionaire CEO? and a board
member of a massive South Korean entertainment
giant. It's the mogul method. And honestly, looking
at the biography and the financial filings we
have in front of us, it's a master class in recognizing
and creating leverage. He never just took the
job he was given. He always tried to buy the
building the job was housed in. So let's rewind.
We need to get out of the boardroom and go all
the way back to the dorm room. Because the origin
story here is actually... It's kind of wild.
It starts in Atlanta, but he's not from Atlanta.
No, no. He's a total transplant. Born in New
York City in 1981. Raised in Coscob, Connecticut.
Scott Samuel Braun. And his background is, you
know. It's very traditional, but also very intense.
His grandparents were Hungarian immigrants who
fled the revolution in 1956, and they were survivors
of the Holocaust. So that's the family history
he's born into. His father, Ervin, was a dentist,
but also a high school basketball coach on the
side. OK, that combination explains a lot. The
precision of a dentist and the competitive fire
of a coach. Exactly. I mean, you don't grow up
in a house like that without inheriting a certain
kind of drive. And it showed. He was class president
at Greenwich. high school, you know, a total
golden boy on paper. For sure. So he follows
that path, heads down to Emory University in
Atlanta to play basketball. And this is where
the timeline gets really interesting. It's the
early 2000s in Atlanta. And you have to picture
the scene. The city is just exploding culturally.
It's the center of the universe for music. You've
got Outkast, Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri. The Dirty
South movement is literally taking over the world.
And right in the middle of all this, you have
this Jewish kid from Connecticut who decides
he's going to be a party promoter. And not just,
like you said, dorm room parties. No, not keg
stands in the basement parties. He starts organizing
these massive professional events. He had a hustle
that was... Frankly, just unusual for a college
student. He wasn't just putting up flyers on
campus. He was building a real network. By 2002,
he's maybe 19 or 20 years old, and he gets hired
to plan the after parties for the anger management
tour. Well, we need to pause on that, the anger
management tour. Because for listeners who might
be a bit younger, this wasn't just some tour.
No, this was an event. This was Eminem at the
absolute dizzying peak of his powers touring
with Ludacris. It was arguably the biggest hip
hop tour of the entire decade. For sure. And
a college dropout is running the nightlife for
it. Across five major cities. That right there
is the sink or swim moment. I mean, if you mess
up the security or the VIP list for Eminem's
entourage, you're done. Your career is over before
it starts. Blacklisted forever. Forever. But
Braun didn't mess up. He crushed it. And that
is when Jermaine Dupri spots him. The legend.
JD. The man behind So Too Deaf Records. Right.
Dupree sees this kid, you know, controlling the
crowd, managing the chaos, making everything
run smoothly. And he doesn't offer him an internship.
He doesn't offer him a junior A &R job. He offers
him the position of executive director of marketing
for So So Death. That is just, it's laughable.
I mean, can you imagine being 20 years old and
your business card says executive director of
a major hip hop label? It's insane. And it really
speaks to a specific talent that Braun had from
the very beginning, code switching. He could
walk into a boardroom with corporate sponsors
and speak their language, you know, ROI, brand
synergy, all of that. And then he could walk
into the studio with Ludacris and speak that
language. He was the bridge. He was the translator.
And he just kept. He kept leveling up. He was
organizing parties for the 2003 NBA All -Star
Game, for Britney Spears' Onyx Hotel tour in
2004. He was just everywhere. You made himself
indispensable. But then, in 2005, he leaves SoSo.
And this, to me, is where I think the mogul method
really truly begins. Because he brokers a deal.
The Pontiac deal. The Pontiac deal. This is the
Rosetta Stone for his entire career. We absolutely
have to unpack this. Please do. Because usually
when we think of music managers back then, we
think of guys booking gigs or getting their artists
on the radio. This is something completely different.
So Ludacris has a music video coming out. The
old model would be, you know, you try to get
a car company to pay you 20 grand to put their
car in the video. Basic product placement. Basic
product placement. Braun goes to Pontiac General
Motors and he doesn't pitch product placement.
He convinces them to build an entire campaign
around Ludacris. It wasn't just, let's feature
the car. It was, let's integrate the car into
the artist's brand and integrate the artist into
the car's marketing. And the number is what's
staggering. It was a $12 million deal. $12 million
in 2005. That is a massive, massive spend for
a car company on one artist. It was astronomical
at the time. And the insight there, the thing
that Braun saw that maybe others didn't, was
that hip hop wasn't a niche anymore. It was the
dominant youth culture. Corporate America was
desperate to touch it, but they were spared.
They didn't know how. Right. They didn't speak
the language. Exactly. And Braun basically walked
in and said, I can translate for you. He leveraged
the cool of the artist to sell the commodity
of the car. And it worked. And presumably he
took a very, very healthy commission on that
$12 million. Enough to set up his own shop. He
goes independent. He starts consulting for the
Atlanta Hawks basketball team. He's building
his own little fiefdom in Atlanta. But he's still
looking for that one thing, that one asset that
he can build from the ground up that he can own.
Which brings us to 2008, the year of what our
source calls the happy accident. The click heard
round the world. It sounds like a myth, but it's
true. The story has become... Almost mythical
at this point. So Scooter is sitting at his computer
late at night, supposedly trying to find a video
of a different singer. I think it was an R &B
artist he was scouting. And he accidentally clicks
a related link on the side of the page. And up
pops this grainy, pixelated video of a 12 -year
-old kid. It's a little kid. A little kid sitting
on a plastic chair in what looks like a living
room in Stratford, Ontario, singing a Ne -Yo
song. Justin Bieber. Now, be honest. If you saw
that video in 2008, would you have seen a billion
dollar globe spanning empire? Absolutely not.
I mean, not a chance. I would have seen a cute
kid with a really nice voice. And that's why
Braun is who he is. And I am not. He saw something
totally different. What did he see? He saw stickiness.
That's the word he uses. He saw that this kid
had a charisma that somehow transcended the terrible
video quality. There was just something there.
But the industry did not agree with him at all.
No. And this is really important context. In
2008, YouTube was for cat videos and, like, funny
home movies. It was not a talent pool. When Braun
started calling record labels saying, hey, I
found a kid on the internet, they laughed at
him. Literally laughed at him? Yeah. They told
him to his face, we don't sign YouTube kids.
It wasn't a thing yet. He was too early. So what
did he do? He basically went into like full on
detective mode, didn't he? He did. He had to.
He tracked down the school board in Stratford,
Ontario, just to try and find Justin's mom, Patty
Millett. And Patty was a very tough sell. Understandably.
For sure. She was a devout Christian, a single
mom, extremely protective of her son. She was
not thrilled about some fast talking guy from
the Atlanta hip hop scene calling her out of
the blue about her son. I can just imagine that
first phone call. Yeah. Hi, trust me, you should
fly. with your preteen son to the city where
Outcast lives, it'll be great. It's a hard pitch.
And he said in interviews that he had to rely
on his own religious background, actually. He
connected with her through their shared faith
and values. He had to convince her he was trustworthy.
And eventually it worked. It did. She finally
agrees to fly down to Atlanta for a trial run.
And once they are on his turf, Braun moves fast.
He gets Justin in the studio immediately, gets
him in front of Usher. But Justin Timberlake
was also in the mix at that point, right? There
was a competition. It became a full -on bidding
war. Timberlake wanted to sign him. Usher wanted
to sign him. And Braun played them off each other
beautifully. That's the way they go with Usher.
In the end, they went with Usher because the
mentorship deal just made more sense. And they
formed a new company, a joint venture. And this
is the key distinction. This is so important.
Braun wasn't just hired as the manager. No. He
was the partner. He owned half the asset. Correct.
He owned the discovery. And because the major
labels were still skeptical, they were still
saying, uh, YouTube kid, we don't know. Braun
and Bieber had to do something totally revolutionary
at the time. They bypassed the radio. They just
ignored it. They went straight to the fans on
Twitter and YouTube. I remember this so vividly.
The one time video. The constant tweeting. He
would have Justin reply to fans individually
for hours. He weaponized the parasocial relationship
before we even had a word for it. He realized
that if you could build an army of teenage girls
on the Internet, the radio stations would have
no choice but to play the record. The demand
would be overwhelming. He created the Beliebers.
It was the first time I think we saw social media
used to just brute force a star into the mainstream.
It was a siege. And it worked. The kid became
the biggest pop star on the planet. And suddenly
Scooter Braun isn't the party planner from Atlanta
anymore. He's the genius. He's the guy who cracked
the code. And now everyone wanted the code. Everybody
wanted the code. He signs Ariana Grande in 2013.
Which was a completely different kind of challenge,
right? She wasn't an unknown. She was a Nickelodeon
star. And breaking a child actor out of that
Disney or Nickelodeon mold is notoriously difficult.
They usually crash and burn or they just fade
away. Right. The curse of the child star. But
Braun navigated her transition into a legitimate,
high fashion, global pop diva almost flawlessly.
It was incredible to watch. Then he brings in
Kanye West for a time, Demi Lovato, J Balvin,
Martin Garrix. The roster just becomes this.
It's a who's who. It reads like the Billboard
Top 100 for the entire decade. Carly Rae Jepsen,
Tori Kelly, David Guetta, the Kiddly Aras. Hit
after hit after hit. But managing that much ego,
that much talent, that much pressure. I mean,
it has to be a complete nightmare. It's got to
be high stress. And we saw the cracks eventually,
right? The relationship with Kanye imploded,
which, to be fair, is kind of a pattern with
Kanye. Right. That's not unique to Scooter. And
then in 2023, there was that bizarre week where
it seemed like every headline was that someone
else had fired him. Yeah. Demi left. Ariana left
for a bit, then came back. The media was basically
writing his obituary as a manager. They were.
But the thing is, he had already pivoted by then.
And this is where we get into the empire section
of this whole story. Because while he was managing
all these stars, he was quietly, methodically
building a corporation behind them. sb projects
because he realized i think that management is
ultimately a service business it is you serve
the client and if the client decides to leave
you have nothing all that work and your revenue
stream is gone overnight He wanted to be in the
asset business. He wanted to own intellectual
property. Okay, so give us a concrete example
of how that manifested. Okay, look at Never Say
Never, the Justin Bieber documentary from 2011.
The 3D movie, I remember. A traditional manager
would have just let a studio like Paramount make
that movie, and maybe they'd take an executive
producer fee, a nice little payday. Sure. Braun
produced it himself through his own company,
SB Projects. The budget was $13 million. It grossed
nearly $100 million worldwide. That is a staggering
return on investment. Just unbelievable. Domestically,
it was the highest grossing music documentary
of all time until the Taylor Swift era's tour
movie came along years later. Braun captured
the value. He didn't just rent Bieber out to
a studio. He created a product around him that
he owned. And he didn't stop with music docs.
I was actually surprised when I was looking through
the sources to see his name on the credits for
Dave, the show on FX with Lil Dicky. Which is
a fantastic show, by the way. It is. And it was
the most watched comedy in the history of the
FX network. That's not a vanity credit. That
is a legitimate, massive hit TV show. And he
also executive produced Scorpion on CBS, which
was a huge procedural drama that ran for four
seasons. He signed a first look deal with Amazon
Studios. He even launched a company called Mytho
Studios with David Maisel. David Maisel. That's
the guy who founded Marvel Studios, right? The
founding chairman. The guy who came up with the
whole cinematic universe idea. They started a
company to produce new comic book franchises.
This is classic Portfolio Theory 101. Explain
that for us. What do you mean? If you're just
a manager, your income is volatile. It depends
entirely on whether Justin wants to tour this
year or whether Ariana has a hit song. It goes
up and down. But if you own a piece of a TV show
that's in the syndication or a movie that's on
streaming services or a comic book IP, that revenue
is much more stable and predictable. He was hedging
his bets against the volatility of pop stars.
Which sets the stage perfectly for the move that
turned him from a very rich guy into a certified
billionaire. Yeah. the formation of Ithaca Holdings,
and the eventual sale to HYBE. This is it. This
is the pinnacle of the mogul method. In April
of 2021, HYBE, the South Korean entertainment
powerhouse, the company behind BTS, comes knocking.
So let's ask the question, why did HYBE need
Scooter Braun? They had BTS. I mean, they were
literally printing money. They were the biggest
thing on the planet. They had the biggest band
in the world, yes, but they were also dangerously
dependent on that one single asset. And they
had global ambitions. They didn't want to just
be a K -pop company. They wanted to be a global
music company. And they needed the foothold in
the U .S. They needed a real foothold in the
U .S. market. They needed the connections to
radio, to brands, to the whole Western media
infrastructure. Scooter Braun was that infrastructure.
He had spent 15 years building it. So they didn't
just hire him. They bought his entire holding
company, Ithaca. The whole thing. For an estimated
price of $1 .5 billion. A billion dollars. Yeah.
Let that sink in. It's an incredible number.
A billion dollars for a management and media
company. It was unheard of. So Braun becomes
the CEO of the New Hype America and he gets a
seat on the board of the parent company in Korea.
It was a massive validation. He effectively sold
his hustle, his network, to a multinational conglomerate.
And I remember reading at the time that he really
took care of his people in that deal. He did.
And this is an important detail, I think. He
carved out about $50 million of his own stock
allocation from the deal and gifted it to his
longtime staff, the people who had been with
him for years. And his biggest clients, Bieber
and Ariana Grande. They each got about $10 million
in stock as well. He made sure that the people
who helped build the empire got a piece of the
exit. So he becomes the CEO of Hybe America,
and he starts making moves. He acquires Quality
Control Music for $300 million. QC. The label
home of Migos, Lil Baby, Lil Yachty. Right, bringing
Coach K and P. Kevin Lee and Pierre Thomas, who
are absolute legends in the Atlanta trap scene,
under the Haib umbrella. It was such a full circle
moment, wasn't it? The kid who started out promoting
parties in Atlanta comes back 20 years later
and buys the biggest, most important hip hop
label in the city. And then in 2024, the mic
drop. He officially announces he's retiring from
day to day artist management. He steps away from
the grind. No more late night calls from artists
having breakdowns on tour. He focuses purely
on the CEO role. And then in 2025, he transitions
again to a board member and senior advisor role.
He's fully corporate now. The transformation
is complete. But we cannot tell this story. We
just can't without stopping at the darkest chapter.
The biggest stain on the resume, the few that
probably generated more tweets than the 2024
election. We have to talk about the Taylor Swift
masters dispute. Yes. And we had to treat this
carefully because people have very, very strong
feelings about it. But let's just stick to the
business facts as they're laid out in our sources.
Yeah. In 2019, bronze company Ithaca acquires
Big Machine Label Group. OK. Big Machine was
Scott Borchetta's label. Borchetta is a guy who
discovered Taylor Swift when she was just a teenager
in Nashville. He signed her. And crucially, the
contract she signed back then stated that the
label, Big Machine, owned the master recordings
of her first six albums. OK, we need to do an
ELI five here. Master recordings. Why does owning
the master matter so much more than, say, writing
the song? Think of it like a house. The publishing
rights, which Taylor owned, that's like the blueprint
of the house, the lyrics, the melody. But the
master is the physical house itself. It's the
actual original recording that you hear on Spotify
or the radio. So if you want to use that specific
recording in a movie or in a TV commercial or
even just stream it, you have to license it from
the owner of the master. It is the primary revenue
generating asset from a recording. So when Braun
bought Big Machine, from his point of view, He
wasn't trying to hurt Taylor Swift personally.
From a purely business perspective, no. He was
buying a catalog of incredibly valuable assets
that generate predictable, long -term cash flow.
It's like buying an apartment building to collect
rent every month. He paid over $300 million for
the label, and the value was almost entirely
in those six Swift albums. But Taylor saw it
very, very differently. She saw it as a profound
betrayal. She called it her worst -case scenario.
She claimed she had been bullied by Braun in
the past. She referenced some social media stuff
involving Bieber and Kanye. And now, this person
she despised owned her life's work, her diaries,
her teenage years. And the central point of controversy
was this. Did she have a chance to buy them herself
before he did? That is the core of the he said,
she said. Scott Borchetta, the founder of Big
Machine, he released texts and statements claiming
she had been offered a deal to earn her master's
back over time. Taylor's side claimed that deal
was manipulative, that she had to earn one old
album back for every new one she turned into
the label. She wanted to buy them outright for
cash, and she says she was never given that specific
opportunity before Braun swooped in and bought
the whole company. The public fallout was just,
it was nuclear. She completely weaponized her
fan base against Braun. It was a PR catastrophe
for him, an absolute disaster. But, and here's
the cold hard business truth of the matter, he
still won. Financially. Yeah. How did he win?
Because in 2020, just about a year after buying
the label, his company, Ithaca, sold just the
master rights to those six Taylor Swift albums
to a private equity fund called Shamrock Holdings.
For how much? The reported price was $405 million.
Wait, wait. So he bought the entire label with
all his artists for around $300 million? A little
over $300, yeah. And then he sold just the Taylor
Swift masters for $405 million. Correct. Ithaca
is estimated to have made a net profit of $265
million on that specific flip. Braun's personal
net from the entire Big Machine deal by 2023
was close to $400 million. He treated the art
like a stock, he bought it, it appreciated, and
he sold it for a massive game. But Taylor kind
of had the last laugh in a way. The Taylor's
version re -recordings. Which was a genuinely
brilliant strategic move. By re -recording all
those old songs, she created new masters that
she owned completely. She encouraged her fans,
movie studios, ad agencies, everyone to use her
versions, which effectively devalued the asset
that Braun had sold to Shamrock. And finally,
in May of 2025, the headline we all knew was
coming eventually. Taylor Swift acquired the
rights to her first six albums. She got them
back. We don't know the exact details, if she
bought them outright from Shamrock or if there
was some complex asset swap. But the loop is
now closed. She owns her work. Braun made his
hundreds of millions in profit. It was a brutal,
ugly war between art and commerce. And somehow,
both sides ended up richer. It really just highlights
the fundamental difference in their worldviews.
For Braun... It was a financial transaction.
For Swift, it was deeply personal. And I don't
think those two perspectives can ever truly reconcile.
No, and it changed the music industry forever.
Every young artist signing a deal now fights
for control of their masters because of this
saga. It was a landmark case. Okay, let's pivot
away from the drama to the other. maybe less
known way, Braun actually made his billion. Because
while all this was going on, while he was fighting
with Taylor Swift, he was also quietly being
one of the smartest venture capitalists in Silicon
Valley. This is the investments chapter. And
frankly, this is why he's a billionaire. The
music money is fantastic, but the tech money
is generational wealth. So he's a partner in
a firm called TQ Ventures. What did they get
into early? Get ready for this list. It's kind
of staggering. Uber, Spotify, Waze, Dropbox,
Pinterest. Hold on. He was an early investor
in Uber. Very early. And Spotify. So how does
a music manager get into the seed rounds of these?
I mean, these are tech unicorns. How do you get
a seat at that table? It's all about access.
Back in, say, 2010, 2011, these tech founders
were desperate for cultural relevance. They were
desperate for cool. They needed celebrities to
use their apps to get them to catch on. Right.
To get mainstream adoption. Exactly. So Braun
would go to them and say, I can get Justin Bieber
to tweet about your new app or I can get Usher
to use it on stage. But I don't want cash for
that. I want equity. I want a piece of the company.
That is just it's genius. Yeah. He traded his
client's fame for stock. Precisely. He used his
client's cultural capital to. buy his way into
the cap tables of what would become the biggest
tech companies of the decade. So when Uber went
public, when Spotify had its IPO, those payouts
for him personally just dwarfed the commission
he was making on a Bieber tour. And that explains
the net worth crossing the $1 billion mark in
2021. It wasn't just a hype deal. It was the
cumulative effect of all of these tech investments
cashing out. It creates a flywheel effect. The
more money he made in tech, the more leverage
and power he had in music. The more power he
had in music, the more access he got in tech.
It just fed itself. And, you know, he hasn't
been hoarding at all. We should definitely talk
about the other side of the ledger here, the
philanthropy and the politics. Because for a
guy who is so often painted as this cartoon villain,
he does a lot of heavy lifting for charity. He
does. And it's significant, high -impact work.
Take them. March for our lives. After the Parkland
school shooting, Braun didn't just write a check.
He and George Clooney were instrumental in actually
organizing the march in D .C. He used his logistical
expertise, I mean, remember, he's a tour manager
at heart, to handle the operations of a massive
political protest. And make a wish. That's another
big one for him. He's on their board of directors
now. But even before that, he and his roster
of artists had granted more wishes than any other
single organization or celebrity group in the
charity's history. It's a huge commitment. And
we have to mention the Stuck With You project
during COVID. Right, the duet with Bieber and
Ariana Grande. That song single -handedly raised
millions of dollars for the First Responders
Children's Foundation, funding grants for the
kids of frontline workers. He knows how to mobilize
his resources for a cause. He's also been very
active and very vocal regarding the Middle East.
But he also tried to kind of... bridge the divide,
didn't he? He didn't just take one side. He did.
A few months later, in March 2024, he launched
a major fundraising initiative with the organization
CARE .org, and that was specifically for Palestinian
relief in Gaza. He has tried to maintain this
very difficult position of supporting his Jewish
heritage while also publicly acknowledging the
humanitarian disaster happening on the other
side. It's a very tough tightrope to walk, especially
in today's climate. But he hasn't stayed silent.
And politically in the U .S., he's a pretty big
deal for the Democrats, right? Oh, a mega donor.
He hosted a huge fundraiser for Hillary Clinton
at his house back in 2015. He did the same for
Kamala Harris in 2019. He's deeply, deeply embedded
in the Democratic Party fundraising machine.
So let's touch briefly on the personal side.
Yeah. Because his life, for better or worse,
has been tabloid fodder for years. For sure.
He was married to Yale Cohen. She's the founder
of the charity Fuck Cancer back in... 2014. For
a while, they were a real power couple. They
have three kids together, but they divorced in
2022. Right. And that was finalized right around
the time his professional life was going through
all that chaos we mentioned earlier with clients
leaving. Yeah. It was a tumultuous period for
him all around. And now it's 2026. Who is he
seeing? Well, the reports as of late 2025 have
him dating the actress Sydney Sweeney. The actress,
of course. It keeps him in the ecosystem, you
know. Even if he's a corporate executive now,
he's still dating one of the biggest, most talked
about stars in Hollywood. It just reinforces
that brand of being right at the center of the
culture. OK, so we have covered a lot of ground.
The college parties, the Pontiac deal, the Bieber
discovery. the empire building with SB Projects,
the billion -dollar Hive acquisition, the Taylor
Swift war, the tech billions. It is an absolutely
exhausting list for a guy who is still only in
his mid -40s. So let's try to synthesize all
of this. So what here? If I'm a listener, why
does Scooter Braun's career actually matter to
me and the music I listen to? I think he represents
the death of the old music business and the birth
of the asset management business that just happens
to deal in music. Unpack that. That's interesting.
Before Scooter, a manager was kind of a glorified
babysitter and booking agent. You make sure the
artist showed up on time and, you know, didn't
do drugs in public. Scooter looked at an artist
and he saw a startup. He saw IP. He saw a media
platform. He realized that the music was, in
a way, just the marketing for the larger brand.
And he proved that you could build real institutional
sellable value around that brand. Exactly. By
selling to Hybe for a billion dollars, he showed
that a management company, a soft business, could
be valued like a tech company. He legitimized
the entire industry in the eyes of Wall Street
and private equity. But is there a downside to
that approach? The downside is exactly what we
saw with the Taylor Swift saga. When you treat
art strictly as an asset, as just another line
item on a spreadsheet to be bought and sold,
you risk stripping away the humanity from it.
You alienate the creator. You invite rebellion.
And maybe that's the fundamental tension that's
going to define the next decade of music. You
have these massive conglomerates like Hybe and
Universal trying to own everything. And then
you have artists fighting for control and ownership
of their own work. That is the battleground.
Absolutely. So here's a final thought to leave
you with. Scooter Braun officially retired from
management in 2024 to go sit on a corporate board.
Taylor Swift bought her master's back in 2025
to own her artistic legacy. In a way, they both
won their respective games. But look at the charts
today in 2026. How many organic grassroots stars
are there really? Or is everything just an algorithm
managed by a holding company and optimized for
TikTok engagement from day one? It feels like
that happy accident of discovering a Justin Bieber
on YouTube just can't happen anymore because
the algorithm is too controlled now. There are
no accidents. Exactly. So does Scooter Braun's
career, this whole arc we've discussed, suggest
that the future of music isn't really about the
music at all? Is it just about who owns the platforms
and the IP that control it? I think we're already
seeing the answer to that. On that cheerful note,
thanks for diving deep with us. We'll catch you
next time. Take care.