I'm surprised I didn't see this earlier. The estate of Isaac Hayes, led by his son, is suing the Trump campaign for continued unauthorized use of the song "Hold On, I'm Coming" at the beginning of each Trump rally.

I’ll be interested in this as well. Most concert venues buy what’s called a “blanket license” to play music, and they don’t need individual artist permission to do so. Blanket licenses were invented back in the early radio days to forestall the need for each individual station to enter into contract negotiations every time they played a song; the paperwork alone would be impossible.

There are probably some places which do not bother because of the cost: places that don’t typically use music, maybe county fairgrounds or college auditoriums or whatever. They can do individual licensing but again, don’t require the permission of the individual artists. It goes through the music licensing organizations ASCAP or BMI or others, and the artists have given them permission to act on their behalf.

(Licensing Simnon & Garfunkel songs for a Simon & Garfunkel concert would be unnecessary, so a school auditorium might not need such a license. But there’s a lot more music used at basketball games etc than in years past, so maybe that’s changed.

I would presume that objecting to a use would tend to stop it, if only because of the embarassment involved, but in truth I’ve been out of that arena for 25 years, so maybe it’s different now.