Music insiders: Taylor Swift ‘playing victim’

Taylor Swift was crowned the world’s highest paid celeb on Wednesday, according to Forbes, with more than $A265 million ($US185 million) raked in over the past year. 

But music industry insiders are accusing the star of “playing victim” in her attack on Scooter Braun last week for buying her former label, Big Machine Records, and say she could’ve scooped up the label herself, Page Six reports.

Swift posted after Braun bought the label, “Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy” and, “This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen.”

But an insider told Page Six of Swift: “Everyone knows she’s playing the victim. She has five homes, a private jet. She even summons her boyfriend (UK actor Joe Alwyn). She sends a jet to London to pick him up and bring him to her when she needs him.”

Swift wrote in the lengthy post: “For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead, I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in.”

But a source pointed out that Swift comes from a family of finance pros, and her dad, Scott, is a Big Machine shareholder.

“She’s omitting the fact that someone acquired the company. She could’ve bought it!” exclaimed a source of the deal. “Her dad is a multi-millionaire shareholder. It’s a business transaction, and she’s making it all about her.”

Another insider told Page Six Swift did try to purchase her masters — and the label — on several occasions, but was met with stipulations.

“It was a s h* tty deal. She tried to buy it multiple times, but they wouldn’t let her cut a check like Scooter,” the source said.

Swift’s lawyer, Donald Passman, has said, “(Big Machine CEO) Scott Borchetta never gave Taylor Swift an opportunity to purchase her masters, or the label, outright with a check in the way he is now apparently doing for others.”

Swift headlined this week’s Amazon Music Prime Day concert and releases her first album for Republic on August 23.

Reps did not comment.

This story first appeared in the New York Post and has been republished here with permission