Right before his win in the New York mayor race, Zohran Kwame Mamdani uploaded a campaign video featuring Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” as the background music.
That clip blasted off online—so many people shared the slogan, “New York is a-changin’,” that it seemed like you couldn’t escape it if you tried! But almost instantly, it got yanked from X, and instead of the video, people saw the simple, cold message: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright holder.” Some imagined maybe Dylan wasn’t thrilled, but that’s not what happened.
The New York Times shared that it was actually Universal Music Publishing Group making the call. Since buying Dylan’s music rights in 2020, UMPG keeps a strict rule: “As a longstanding policy, we do not license Bob Dylan compositions for projects involving political figures.” That’s what their statement said, at least.
Even before this, Mamdani’s team had apparently tried to officially license the track, but two people (not named) told The Times that they got a hard no from the publisher. UMPG hasn’t come out and flat-out said they demanded the post get taken down, but sometimes these platforms use robots and fancy tech to spot any copyright issues, and videos vanish on autopilot.
Fans wonder how computers decide what content gets blocked or what magically stays up, because there are still versions of this video floating around on Instagram and TikTok Thursday morning (November 6).
Sometimes we think these copyright fights make the songs even more famous, though it must be super annoying for the people running the campaign.
