He signed Justin Bieber and Psy, and angered Taylor Swift: ‘Scooter’ Braun’s rise to power
- Braun discovered Justin Bieber, signed an unknown Carly Rae Jepsen and recently acquired much of Taylor Swift’s back catalogue
- We look at his rise from college entrepreneur to leading music executive
Around this time last year, two of pop music’s biggest superstars got unusually candid about their love lives.
Ariana Grande was enjoying a very public romance with Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson. Justin Bieber, meanwhile, was engaged to Hailey Baldwin, a milestone he made Instagram official.
Amid this rare constellation of celebrity PDA, one fan called attention to the manager Grande and Bieber share, Scott “Scooter” Braun, in a pithy tweet: “The devil works hard, but Scooter Braun works harder.”
It was a joke – the tweet was deleted after drawing a pointed response from Grande – but the sentiment spoke to Braun’s increasing influence in pop culture. He could make things happen, and fans recognised that. The devil and/or Kris Jenner would be proud.
Braun, 38, famously discovered Bieber back in 2008 when the Stratford, Ontario native was a preteen crooning R&B covers on YouTube. As Bieber skyrocketed to fame, Braun turned his entrepreneurial talents into a veritable entertainment empire, amassing a slew of in-demand clients including Demi Lovato, model Karlie Kloss and, at one point, Jenner’s son-in-law, Kanye West.