Reading between the lines of this NEW YORK TIMES story on the tangled lines between TAYLOR SWIFT, SCOOTER BRAUN and the CARLYLE GROUP, it doesn't take much of a stretch to conclude that the main reason the label owner spoke publicly for the first time last week about his long-running war with the pop star is because his private equity partners told him to. And that they did so because Swift—and her fans—had backed them into a corner. And that—I'm no longer reading between the lines, the Times' sources actually say this—the possibility of Swift getting her masters back is now in play. All of this points to the one big question a lot of people might have missed in assessing the wisdom and effectiveness of Swift's social media outburst two weeks ago. Which is this: Have the rules changed? And did Swift change them, or did she simply recognize the change before most other people did? Is she pop's ANTHONY DAVIS (or LEBRON JAMES or KEVIN DURANT or KAWHI LEONARD)? In the past few years, basketball's elite players have figured out they have extraordinary power and leverage in dictating where they play, who they play with and how much money they earn. Swift's two major public protests of Braun's purchase of her old label, BIG MACHINE, came in July, as the NBA's center of gravity was undergoing a seismic shift, and in November, as the basketball league was still settling into its new reality. Is this pop's new reality, too? Can labels no longer shake it off when pop stars talk about their masters? Is boilerplate contractual language now open to public discussion? Can that discussion have an impact? Are the fans on their mobile phones gaining power on the executives in their corner offices? In Braun's emotional open letter to Swift last week, he said some of Swift's fans, responding to her public complaints, had threatened him and his family. That kind of behavior is unwarranted and wrong. Always. What Braun didn't say, and what the Times pointed out, is that other fans had taken Swift's cue to go after the Carlyle Group, and they did so not in the form of personal threats but as political protests. An actual tweet from a Swift fan: "So when you think about it, you either support Taylor Swift or the war in Yemen." Tweets like that apparently got the private equity group's attention. This is not, presumably, what it thought it was buying into. So now here we are, with the owner of Big Machine being told to negotiate with an artist who long ago left the label but remains its most prized asset. "People in private equity look at music copyrights and think, ‘It’s like real estate,’ but it’s not,” SONGS MUSIC PUBLISHING founder MATT PINCUS told the Times. "You’re dealing with living, breathing artists." And, not incidentally, their fans... Swift praised her new label, REPUBLIC, and didn't mention her old one at Sunday's AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS, where she was named both Artist of the Year and Artist of the Decade. Her medley of hits at the show, which she said Big Machine had tried to block her from performing, is what sparked the current chapter of the Taylor/Scooter/Carlyle imbroglio. She began it by wearing a shirt with all her album titles spelled out, SPEAK NOW most prominently. She did speak, but about herself and her fans and her "complicated" year, and only obliquely about her antagonists. The biographical video introducing the Artist of the Decade situation may have been the first such video at any awards show that included the phrase "non-recoupable compensation." Respect... SHANIA TWAIN quoted Swift's "SHAKE IT OFF" (and songs by DRAKE, POST MALONE and others) during her show-closing medley... The rest of the show featured lots of BILLIE EILISH, HALSEY and CAMILA CABELLO, awards you won't remember, performances you well might, and lots of dancing both onstage and off... Halsey's acceptance speech will no doubt have people talking... Half a century ago, jazz pianist ERROLL GARNER went up against COLUMBIA RECORDS, and won... A different kind of tangled triangle: FISCHERSPOONER's CASEY SPOONER, MIRWAIS and MADONNA... One of R. KELLY's "girlfriends" (the quotes are mine, not hers, but, y'know) has turned against him... Nashville musician gets $10,000 tip... RIP K-pop star GOO HARA and longtime A&R exec and publicist RON OBERMAN.
