Former President Donald Trump has drawn the ire of another musical group for unauthorized use of their music. This time, it’s the Foo Fighters.
Trump played the band’s song “My Hero” when he welcomed former independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the stage at a rally in Arizona on Friday[…]
[…]The spokesperson added that any royalties received as a result of the Trump campaign’s use of the song will be donated to the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz.
ASCAP nicely has a whole page set up to ELI5 the licensing of music for political events.
I always had a lot of assumptions, but this breaks it down very nicely.
What music is covered by the ASCAP license for political campaigns?
The ASCAP political campaign license agreement provides a blanket license to perform any or all of the millions of musical works in the ASCAP repertory. However, ASCAP members may ask us to exclude some or all of their works from a particular political campaign’s license. In that event, ASCAP will notify the campaign of the excluded works.
If the campaign events are properly licensed, can the campaign still be criticized or even sued by an artist for playing their song at an event?
Yes. If an artist is concerned that their music has been associated with a political campaign, he or she may be able to take legal action even if the campaign has the appropriate performance licenses. The campaign could potentially be in violation of other laws, unrelated to music licensing:
The artist’s Right of Publicity, which in many states provides image protection for famous people or artists
The Lanham Act, which covers confusion or dilution of a trademark (such as a band or artist name) through its unauthorized use
False Endorsement, where use of the artist’s identifying work implies that the artist supports a product or candidate
As a general rule, a campaign should be aware that, in most cases, the more closely a song is tied to the “image” or message of the campaign, the more likely it is that the recording artist or songwriter of the song could object to the song’s usage by the campaign.
Not quite, but you could say they’re the dogs of enforcing royalties! Har har!
I’m bad at telling if people are serious or not, so I’ll give a real answer too.
ASCAP is the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. You’re on lemmy.ca, so in Canada, the equivalent is SOCAN, Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. Their front page gives a pretty good run down of the purpose of these organizations.
Basically they enforce copyright and royalties collection. They license copyright music for public use and distribute that money to artist, somewhat like a brick and mortar Spotify for people hosting public events or social settings.
