How Scooter Braun Became One of Music’s Most Powerful — and Controversial — Managers

Rumors are swirling regarding Scooter Braun, the manager who has helped steer the careers of some of the biggest pop stars of the past 20 years, and a potential wave of A-list clients leaving his roster.

Demi Lovato has parted ways with the manager in a decision that a source described to The Messenger as "completely mutual." Meanwhile, despite reports to the contrary, Justin Bieber has not split with Braun, representatives for both told The Messenger. Other outlets have reported that Ariana Grande has split with Braun as well, though that has yet to be officially confirmed. J Balvin and Idina Menzel reportedly parted ways with Braun earlier in the year.

What's causing all of this turmoil? A source tells The Messenger that these splits are related to Braun reportedly becoming CEO of HYBE America, the South Korean company behind BTS, which bought Braun's Ithaca Holdings in 2021. 

While the dust settles, it's worth looking back at how Braun developed such high-profile connections in the music industry — and the past controversy that continues to follow him years later.

How did Scooter Braun get his start?

Born in New York and raised in Connecticut, Braun — whose birth name is Scott Samuel Braun ("Scooter" is a childhood nickname that stuck) — attended Emory University in Atlanta. While in school, he made ends meet by selling fake IDs ("I was the fake ID king," he once said). Later, he began organizing parties at local nightclubs. At one venue, he met Ludacris and the rapper hired Braun to stage afterparties for dates on his Anger Management tour with Eminem. Soon, Jermaine Dupri, the Grammy-winning rapper, songwriter and producer who has worked with Mariah Carey, Usher, Destiny's Child and many others, hired Braun as executive director of marketing for Dupri's label So So Def. He later arranged parties around the 2003 NBA All-Star Game and Britney Spears' Onyx Hotel Tour. 

Braun eventually left So So Def, and shortly afterward, brokered a $12 million ad deal between Ludacris and Pontiac. Looking back on his success bridging the hip-hop world and corporate America, Braun once said, "Because I'm white and I'm comfortable around black people, I can serve as a bridge between the mostly black hip-hop world and the mostly white, corporate world."

How did he build his high-profile management roster?

Braun founded his own management company, SB Projects in 2007. The next year, he and Usher co-founded a new label RBMG Records (standing for Raymond Braun Media Group). Their first and only artist was Justin Bieber, whom Braun had come across singing covers on YouTube. Braun soon began managing Bieber, and the teenage singer and his mother moved to Atlanta, where Braun was based. Bieber's debut, My World, would eventually land seven singles on the Billboard Hot 100.

Braun's roster soon grew to include Ariana Grande, Psy, Carly Rae Jepsen, Black Eyed Peas, Kanye West and Demi Lovato, among others, making him one of the most powerful and well-connected managers in music.

What prior controversies has Braun been involved in?

In 2018, West fired Braun as his manager, apparently because Braun wouldn't work for him full-time. "Yes, I got relieved of my last manager. Why? Because he wouldn’t come to work full time," West tweeted at the time.

In 2019, Ithaca Holdings, another company of Braun's, purchased the Big Machine Label Group, which had been the first record company to work with Taylor Swift. The result was that Braun would own the master recordings to Swift's first six albums, including smash hits like Speak Now, Red and 1989.

"This is my worst case scenario," Swift wrote in a statement at the time, directly calling out Braun as an "incessant, manipulative bully." (One upshot to all this is Swift's ongoing series of Taylor's Version remakes.) Her ire stemmed from the fact that Braun was managing Kanye West at the time of Swift and West's feud over the song "Famous" ("I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous") and its accompanying video, which featured a nude likeness of Swift and which she likened to "revenge porn."

“Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it,” Swift wrote, adding, “Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter.”

Reflecting on the incident, Braun later said, "I didn't appreciate how that all went down. I thought it was unfair," he said. "But I also understand, from the other side, they probably felt it was unfair, too."

What artists does Braun still work with?

Currently in addition to Bieber, Grande, Black Eyed Peas and Jepsen, the SB Projects website lists clients including David Guetta, Kely Rowland, Lil Dicky, Quavo, the Kid Laroi, producer Andrew Watt and YG.