Scott Borchetta

Scott Borchetta (born July 3, 1962) is an American businessman and record executive best known for founding Big Machine Records and for discovering singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. He started the label in 2005 with 13 employees, and as its president and CEO. In 2015, he became the new in house mentor on American Idol for the program's 14th season.
Before Big Machine, Borchetta was a race car driver and a staff member at the Nashville divisions of DreamWorks Records and MCA Records as well as MTM Records, owned by actress Mary Tyler Moore's MTM Enterprises.

Borchetta was born in Burbank, Californiato parents Shari and Mark Borchetta. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California in the 1970s. His father, Mike Borchetta, worked in record promotions for several Los Angeles record labels, including Capitol Records, RCA Records and Mercury Records. In 1978, when Borchetta was 16, his father moved to Nashville to start his own independent record promotion company.

He continued to develop his passion for the music industry through high school and college.

Early career

Interested in life beyond Los Angeles, Scott Borchetta began to pursue his love for music. After playing in several rock bands, he left California and moved to Nashville with his father. There, Borchetta played bass in a country band and spent his days working in his father's mail room promoting country singles. After 8 months on the road, he left his band since they were not finding success. While working with his father, Borchetta learned a great deal about the music industry and how it operates, and used this knowledge to pursue jobs at record labels. In 1985, he got a job at MTM Records, where he stayed for three years. He then spent two years working as an independent promoter before working in promotion and artist development at several other record labels, including MCA Nashville Records, DreamWorks Nashville and Universal Music Nashville.

Big Machine Records

In 2005, Borchetta made the decision to leave Universal Music Nashville to start his own independent record label, Big Machine Records. From his experiences with working at several record labels, Borchetta realized that he disagreed with how major labels run their business, and felt that he could run his own label more efficiently than what he had seen.

Soon after starting the label, Borchetta signed his first artist, Taylor Swift (whom he had met in 2004) when she was 14 years old. Swift would eventually go on to become Big Machine's most successful artist and win the label 2 Grammy awards for Album of the Year for the albums Fearless at the 2010 Grammy Awards and "1989" at the 2016 Grammy Awards. Soon after signing Swift, Borchetta also signed two other artists to Big Machine: Jack Ingram (who would produce the label's first #1 song on country radio, "Wherever You Are") and Danielle Peck.

Borchetta is a race-car enthusiast, and has been a race car driver for many years before starting his record label. On the topic, Borchetta says, "I’ve loved race-car driving for years. When I started Big Machine, my main investor and my first artists asked me to give it up because it’s so dangerous."