You’ve probably seen or heard the news that former president Donald Trump and his campaign were recently sued for copyright infringement by The White Stripes and the estate of Isaac Hayes Jr.
Hayes’ estate sued last month based on the campaign’s use of the song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” which Hayes co-wrote. Last week, the court issued a preliminary injunction temporarily barring the Trump campaign from performing the song at future rallies.
Earlier this week, Jack and Meg White (The White Stripes) sued over inclusion of the introductory riff from the 2003 song “Seven Nation Army” in pro-Trump campaign videos.
Regardless of your political views, you might wonder what the problem is, given that you frequently hear music playing in the background when you run errands or eat at a restaurant, and many of the videos that appear on YouTube and social media have music playing in the background.
You might even own or operate a business that plays recorded music or hosts live music or that creates videos that include third-party music.
Performance Licenses
While there are some limited exceptions, if you don’t own all of the rights and the music isn’t in the public domain, you usually need to obtain a license before publicly playing or performing music. If you hire musicians to play live music or DJs to play recorded music, you’re responsible for ensuring that all music they play is properly licensed, so don’t just trust the musicians to take care of it.
Buying a CD or MP3, streaming music from a service like Spotify or Pandora (even if you use the paid version), or playing the radio doesn’t mean you can skip paying for a license from one or more performance rights organizations (PROs), such as ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, or GMR, because you still need a license to play the music in public.
Since commercial accounts and licensing fees are expensive, you might think using a residential account for your business is a good way to save money — after all, what are the odds of you getting caught? Probably a lot higher than you think. Music providers hire investigators to find violators by visiting a variety of venues.
You can obtain a “blanket” public performance license for all the music represented by a particular PRO, or you can pay for licenses only for the specific music you’re using.
Obtaining a music performance license can be complex, because rights tend to be owned by multiple parties, and those parties may be enrolled with different PROs, so you might need to obtain multiple licenses for the same piece of music.
Licenses for music used by political campaigns are exceptionally tricky, because rights owners can exclude their music from a particular political campaign’s license. In other words, if a musician (or other rights owner) removes music from a political campaign’s license, the campaign can no longer legally use the song.
Licenses for Use in Videos
Similarly, to use music in videos, you need a synchronization license as well as either a master recording license or a master use license, depending on whether you’re recording your own version of the music or using a pre-existing recording. These types of licenses must be negotiated directly with the rights owner(s).
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It remains to be seen how the cases filed by The White Stripes and the Hayes estate will be decided, but these lawsuits serve as a good reminder to doublecheck that your business has obtained all necessary music licenses.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the above, need help with protecting your own intellectual property, or desire to license the intellectual property of others.
Photo by Gabriel Gurrola on Unsplash
