Did Donald Trump really pay to use the music of ABBA?
What do the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Phil Collins, The Smiths, Sinead O’Connor, Isaac Hayes, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Beyonce and Tom Petty have in common? All of them are among the more than forty artists and bands that have told Donald Trump to stop using their music at political rallies or in his ads. Collins and Petty’s estate has gone as far as file a ‘cease and desist’ request. What usually happens is that after Trump gets a stop request, he moves on to another piece of music until he gets another stop request. It’s a way to cheat musicians out of their royalty money like he’s been doing to his real estate contractors for decades.
His latest musical victim is the Swedish band ABBA. Trump used three of the group’s songs at his rally, in Minnesota. In the state with the highest Swedish population in the country, Trump thought he’d be cute by playing “Money, Money, Money”, “The Winner Takes It All” and “Dancing Queen” at his event. He also used a video of an Abba performance, with messages on where to donate to his campaign.
It didn’t take long for ABBA and their management to tell the Trump campaign to knock it off. But, this time The Donald’s people went a different route. They replied that they had paid to use the music.
Music licensing is somewhat tricky. Just because a musician tells someone to stop using their music doesn’t make it a done deal, especially if they don’t own the publishing rights, which, especially nowadays, most don’t. If you pay a fee to the publishing company, which in the United States is usually ASCAP and BMI, you can use a song in whatever way you’d like—-no matter how distasteful it is to the artist. It gets a little more complicated because ABBA is a European group. Their music is represented by Universal Music Publishing AB and Polar Music International AB. According to a band spokesperson, “They have not received any request or money, so no permission or license has been given to Trump.”
At this point, the dispute comes down to who do you believe: Trump and his campaign who said they already paid or ABBA and their management who said they haven’t? But, really it’s now all moot. Trump will just go on to piss off a different artist or band by playing their music. And if he goes back to Minnesota, he can pick another musician from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. How about Prince? Never mind—his estate is still pissed off about Trump using “Purple Rain”, in 2019. Maybe try Bob Dylan; he seems the type to be cool about this. I think “Idiot Wind” would be the perfect song for the Trump campaign. Good luck with this.