{"id":8466,"date":"2025-11-06T02:21:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/zohran-mamdanis-bob-dylan-ad-removed-from-x-after-umpg-song-denial\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T02:21:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:21:16","slug":"zohran-mamdanis-bob-dylan-ad-removed-from-x-after-umpg-song-denial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/zohran-mamdanis-bob-dylan-ad-removed-from-x-after-umpg-song-denial\/","title":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani’s Bob Dylan Ad Removed From X After UMPG Song Denial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tBob Dylan\u2019s \u201cThe Times They Are A-Changin\u2019\u201d scored New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani\u2019s final advertisement before his election night victory \u2014 but the campaign spot has now been removed from X amid a licensing rejection from Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ad, posted by Mamdani\u2019s various social media accounts just before polls closed on Tuesday (Nov. 4), featured the caption \u201cNew York is a-changin\u2019\u201d and a montage of scenes from the 34-year-old progressive\u2019s campaign set to Dylan\u2019s famous protest song. Mamdani was declared the winner of the race Tuesday night, beating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut as first reported<\/a> by the New York Times<\/em>, the ad has since been taken down from X and replaced by a notice reading, \u201cThis media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.\u201d The video is still available on Instagram and TikTok. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt was not immediately clear who requested that the video be taken down from the social media platform, but a source familiar with the situation tells Billboard <\/em>that UMPG, which has owned Dylan\u2019s publishing catalog since 2020, previously denied a request from Mamdani\u2019s campaign to license the composition.<\/p>\n

\n\tReached for comment on the matter on Wednesday (Nov. 5), a spokesperson for UMPG said, \u201cAs a longstanding policy, we do not license Bob Dylan compositions for projects involving political figures.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe Mamdani campaign did not immediately return a request for comment. A rep for Sony Music, which owns Dylan\u2019s master recordings, declined to comment. Representatives from Instagram owner Meta and TikTok did not immediately respond to questions about whether the platforms also received takedown notices for the ad.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile individual social media users are free to soundtrack their videos with songs covered by blanket licenses, advertisements must get clearance from copyright owners via a so-called sync license.<\/p>\n

\n\tFailure to get a sync license for a political video creates potential legal liability, as Billboard <\/em>has recently reported in the wake of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration posting TikTok videos featuring Taylor Swift\u2019s No. 1 single \u201cThe Fate of Ophelia\u201d and Zach Bryan\u2019s track \u201cRevival.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cThe Times They Are A-Changin\u2019\u201d scored New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani\u2019s final advertisement before his election night victory \u2014 but the campaign spot has now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2698,611,6998,6997,2250,986,6999,6996],"class_list":["post-8466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-bob","tag-denial","tag-dylan","tag-mamdanis","tag-removed","tag-song","tag-umpg","tag-zohran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}