17
votes
ABBA becomes the latest in a long line of artists to ask Donald Trump not to use their music at campaign events
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- Title
- ABBA tell Trump to stop using their music in campaign - DW - 08/29/2024
- Word count
- 386 words
ABBA has always held strict guidelines on who can and can't use their music, and even who they license their music to. Regardless of politics or reasons why, if it's not licensed, you can't use their music. I'd say that makes perfect sense and it's bizarre that presidential candidates just use music without licensing it.
But because ABBA is so strict, it will always remain funny to me how an entire episode of Community is just playing ABBA songs the entire time.
From what I understand, it's the event venues that license the music and the campaigns have access to their licenses. That being said, more labels are allowing separate 'political licenses' where the artists make clear whether they want their music used for political purposes. Still, though, it's the venues that 'have' the music.
I remember when I was in a children's choir, we'd occasionally sing on local news (usually around the holidays). Most TV stations pay both ASCAP and BMI, the two big licensing agencies for public performance rights, to cover their bases, but for some reason our local Fox station only paid for one of them. The only reason I even know ASCAP and BMI exist is because my choir director complained about it (and thus explained it to us) when our list of songs for that performance was kinda weird compared to our usual.
Anyway music licensing is crazy intense, they do not fuck around.
I love ABBA, I wish Swedish people were real.