Another GOP Candidate Indirectly Promotes Bernie Sanders By Not Getting Music Cleared With Artist

from the free-advertising dept

This is apparently going to keep happening. A while back, we discussed the situation in which Donald Trump declared his candidacy for President (while making comments that torpedoed a bunch of his vaunted business interests) and used the music of Neil Young without the artist's permission. As I noted at the time, Trump was legally allowed to use the music, since the venue had paid the required ASCAP license, but failing to go the extra step and clearing it with Young allowed the musician to generate headlines all to do with his support of Democrat Bernie Sanders. Since candidacy announcements are generally not done to generate name recognition for one's opponents, I suggested that, hey, just go get the whiny artist's permission first, mmkay?



Bobby Jindal didn't take my advice. Jindal used the music of Buckwheat Zydeco during his presidential announcement and, well, ol' Buckwheat was not pleased.

Buckwheat's music was among several songs that played at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner before Jindal and his supporters took the stage, Gambit Weekly reported while live tweeting the event. The zydeco musician replied to Gambit on his own Twitter page and said that Bobby Jindal using the music of Buckwheat and his band is "not cool at all."

He had much kinder words for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who strutted on stage to launch his presidential bid with Buckwheat's "Make A Change" playing in the background.



He said Sanders' use of the song was "tres bien."

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Again, we'll go ahead and assume that the music was properly licensed because that always ends up being the case, but what's the point of letting the discussion of your presidential bid get side-railed because you chose to use the music of some guy who doesn't support you? All the campaign would have to do would be to clear the use with the artist and then all this doesn't happen. Is that really so hard? I mean, sure the musicians are being childish and petty (and have no legal claim), but that's the reality. If you don't want to give extra promotion to opponents, maybe find musicians who actually supports you.And it's also the reality that all angry-musician-roads lead to Bernie Sanders, apparently.And so we now have two separate GOP candidate announcements generating publicity for Bernie Sanders. To avoid a third, candidates need only take my advice on clearing the music they use with the artists.

Filed Under: bernie sanders, bobby jindal, buckwheat zydeco, donald trump, license, music, support