Ben Gilbert: uncertainty

Transcript context

…One of the execs who shows up—and it was, I think, apparently well-attended—is a man named Scott Borchetta. Scott is an executive at one of Universal's sub-labels in Nashville and he's planning to leave Universal and start his own label. He finds Taylor after the show and he pitches in and says, hey, I want to sign you and I want to sign you to a real record deal. I want to make an album with you. I'm about to leave Universal though and start my own indie label. I want you to take a risk on me. I really believe in you. I believe that you can write your own songs. You can make country music for teenagers. I think this is really going to work. Taylor doesn't agree right away. It takes a little bit of time of Scott pitching her and her family to do this, but they decided to do it. Taylor has this quote, "You can tell when someone just really gets you. The best part of getting a record deal wasn't just that it was a record deal. It was the right deal for me. I'm with people I believe in and they believe in me." To underscore how much of a chance they were taking on each other, Taylor Swift was Scott's new label, Big Machine's very first client. Both of them taking a chance on each other. I don't know if it was in conjunction with doing this record deal or a little bit before a little bit after, but there's another transaction that happens between the Swift family and Big Machine. Right. Scott Borchetta needed some financing to get this off the ground. It costs money to make an album, to distribute an album. Where does he get the money? Well, one place he gets it from a minority investor is Taylor's dad. The Swift family invests $120,000 in Big Machine for a 3% stake in the label.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.