Taylor Swift knows you need something to distract from the monotony of self-isolation, so she has checked back in on the ongoing feud with her former label, Big Machine, which is now co-owned by her industry nemesis and Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun. Tonight the label plans to release a live album of a past Swift performance, and the singer-songwriter has taken to her Instagram stories to basically call it a petty cash grab. “Hey guys — 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. 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,” Swift wrote. “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. It looks to me like Scooter Braun and his financial backers, 23 Capital, Alex Soros and the Soros family and The Carlyle Group have seen the latest balance sheets and realized that paying $330 MILLION for my music wasn’t exactly a wise choice and they need money.”
Calling Braun and company some version of trash is pretty in line with rhetoric she’s used to talk about his Big Machine acquisition in the past, previously describing herself as “sad and grossed out” when she says she first got the news about the sale of the label, and therefore the masters to everything she recorded pre-Lover. This fight has always been gloves off for Swift, and in the closing line of today’s Instagram post, she writes, “In my opinion…Just another case of shameless greed in the time of Coronavirus. So tasteless, but very transparent.”