The only issue in question is that his rallies are televised which is a legal gray area if the music is playing in the venue (according to articles on this).
I said that 5 posts ago.
Here....
After Queen’s complaint, its PRO, BMI, decided to utilize its Political Entities license clause. “As a way to protect our affiliates, the BMI Political Entities license has a provision that permits BMI to exclude any musical work from the license at the request of a BMI songwriter or publisher,” says BMI’s SVP of licensing Mike Steinberg. “Once the songwriter or publisher voices an objection to BMI, we alert the campaign that we have removed the song from the license.”
Last week, BMI sent letters to the Trump campaign and to the RNC, detailing Queen’s objections and asked them to sign its Political Entities license. By doing so, they acknowledge that Queen’s music is no longer part of BMI’s blanket license and the campaign can no longer use it.
LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 12: Former Queen guitarist and campaigner Brian May poses with people dressed... [+]
RNC and Trump's campaign signed the license, but it’s unclear what happens if the RNC violates the agreement by playing the Queen’s music again, but the RNC can no longer claim that Queen’s music was included in its blanket license and, therefore, among the list of available songs. (Queen's Brian May declined to comment).
Furthermore, Steinberg tells FORBES that the PRO is going to look how it can invoke the license down the road, even though, at this point, songwriters aren’t able to “opt out” of a specific license type preemptively. “The current sensitivities surrounding the Political Entities license ensure we are going to be looking at this more closely in advance of the next election cycle to determine if such a mechanism would be feasible and permissible within the constraints of our consent decree,” he says.
Following the RNC, ASCAP (whose members include the Rolling Stones) is directing its songwriters—and political campaigns— to a guide on its website that walks through the issue and what is and isn’t allowed, but stresses that campaigns should take the extra step of asking permission.
“Even with the proper PRO licenses, songwriters may have other cause to object to the use of their songs being heavily identified with a political candidate or cause,” says Vincent Candilora, ASCAP’s EVP of licensing. “That's why, we strongly encourage campaigns, especially if they plan to use popular songs as theme songs for a candidate, it would be in their own best interest to obtain permission, to avoid negative media coverage and to minimize the risk of violating other laws.” (It's unclear if ASCAP has its equivalent of a Political Entities license that allows songwriters to opt out)
The “violating other laws” is where it gets even more complicated. After last week’s story, some lawyers brought up the “right of publicity” law, a provision by which many states provide image protection for famous people or artists, as well as the Lanham Act, which covers the dilution of a band or artist’s trademark through an unauthorized use. The problem is that both of these are untested as far as campaign usages since no artist or songwriter seems to have ever taken a case to trial citing a violation by a campaign—or at least as far as we could find. That’s probably in part because of the expense and that the usages are usually very short lived, plus, as Candilora points out, “our experience has been that when a songwriter publicly objects to the use of a song by a campaign, generally, the campaigns comply with the request.” (These usages do not cover campaign commercials, for which permission must be granted by the copyright and master owners).
As the DNC continues this week, it will be interesting to see if any of its music usages provoke similar ire from artists and songwriters, but we doubt that this is an issue that is going away any time soon.
