Trump vs. Neil Young and What You Can Learn From It.
Well, people... Can you believe it? Trump finally found his way into the music business, and this is a really great lesson for everyone to learn, so you wanna know about it.
So today we're gonna talk about Donald Trump and Neil Young and how Donald Trump's campaign totally screwed up and using one of his songs without asking Neil Young’s permission.
Today’s Artist of the Day: Kenosha Kid
So with that, let's get on to the fight of the ages, Neil Young versus Donald Trump. In case you didn't hear, recently, Neil Young has filed a suit against the Donald Trump campaign for using one of his songs, Rockin in the Free World as a part of his whole presentation. I guess he was having a rally somewhere and he played Rockin in the Free World, and Neil was not having it at all. In addition to Rockin in the Free World being a part of the suit, he's also including a song that was used called Devil's Sidewalk. In the suit Neil describes the use of his songs as a use of divisive, unAmerican campaign that's based in hate and ignorance, the suit was followed back on August 4th, and we're still awaiting a Trump response, but the real kicker here for us music business folks is because that's what I like to talk about, is that he did not obtain the rightful permission to use these songs, every venue pays a BMI or ASCAP performance license so that music can be played in their room, I'm sure that the Trump campaign thought that that was enough coverage for them to start using people's songs without asking permission and unfortunately, in this particular case, the artist has a real problem with that.
Neil Young is claiming that Donald Trump has been using these songs without his permission at many of his events over the past year or so, and in a suit, he's asking for $750 up to $150,000 per instance that his songs was used without being asked, events such as these usually require a third party license for people to use their music, but also the Trump campaign really messed up because this was a live video event, and whenever you have a live video event that requires a syncline to be obtained for the usage of these songs to be performed on live TV, even if they applied for all the correct licenses, they have to go then to the Neil Young camp and say, Hey, Donald Trump wants to use these songs for your campaign, and Neil Young then has the right to say, no.
Obviously, I think it's safe to say that the Trump campaign is probably going to have to pay up, and this is probably a slam dunk of a case from the legal perspective of the Neil Young camp.But what's the lesson here? The truth is, You shouldn't be using anyone else's music without having a license these days with live streams, for example, it's really crazy because the laws are so far behind where we are as a society, and I could also see why a campaign thinking that a venue had a blanket coverage of being able to play songs over speakers would be enough, but when you're dealing with a figure as controversial as Trump, you think you'd wanna maybe take an extra step to see who would let you use their songs... Right, obviously, these fines are just a drop in the bucket for probably somebody like Donald Trump, but still... That's gotta suck, right?