Friday, February 13, 2026
Miscommunication Between Artist and Olympic Figure Skater Highlights the Mess of Music Copyright
www.vice.com: On February 8, 2026, Canadian artist Seb McKinnon publicly questioned the use of his song “The Return” after learning U.S. Olympic figure skater Amber Glenn choreographed her free skate to the track. McKinnon posted on X/Twitter, claiming Glenn used the song “without permission” and that it “aired all over the world.” He then asked, “What? Is that usual practice for the Olympics?”
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6 comments:
I’m very glad I don’t have to deal with licensing music, because it seems like such a complicated situation. Many of the projects that I have worked on in the past have been small enough or scrappy enough that they have not even tried to properly license things, or just avoid using any content that would need to be licensed. The step of figuring out what the process would even be to use a piece of restricted content is so daunting, that it feels impractical for any individual person to do. I know that you are not supposed to use Spotify for Pre/Post show music, but I have also seen that happen so many times, including at professional theaters.
One interesting dynamic about this whole conversation is how artist driven projects grow. If an artist is just doing work for themselves they may feel free to use whatever content is available to them, but as their show gets bigger and bigger, they do have to think about these things, and eventually it may cause a problem if they don’t.
Honestly, soundtrack copyright is a serious issue in worldwide events. Skaters cannot just use a song for a competition simply because they think they are doing something very honorable to themselves, their country, or their work with the song. To my knowledge, I think it’s a win-win situation for both a reputed skater and a famous music artist to work together to present a show-like competition. However, not asking for permission and, as the Olympics have money involved, that will be illegal for the other actors who asked or paid for their copyright. Also, I have been wondering where the music list for the background music playing on the Olympic day came from. Is it like someone would do this job of getting the copyrights of songs, or is it just random songs they generated?
Copyright laws, especially those surrounding music, seem to be quite confusing. I wonder if the confusion stems from the rules themselves or from the lack of standardization regarding obtaining them. It seems that there is no standard process for obtaining copyright and then submitting music for an event like this. This reminds me of the time I was working on a smaller production and both the PMs and TDs had never worked a musical before. The roles and jobs delegated to each were not clearly defined, and then everyone was confused because one group thought the other was to take care of something and then the somethings never got done. This was a lesson I have taken with me to every production I’ve worked on since, and that is to sit down and provide clear expectations and outlines of what is expected from myself and those who I work with. In this way, we can ensure smoother communication and make the production process so much easier.
At first I expected this article to highlight an interaction between McKinnon and Glenn that resulted in some apparent misunderstanding, but I feel that there was actually no communication in the first place. This was reminding me of how communication can be so important in CMU Drama, and that poor communication can often be a recipe for disaster. It’s interesting how you could argue that communication is more integral to one industry than another, but it’s ultimately necessary in every instance of collaboration or even competition. Permission in choosing skating music had never crossed my mind before, but it definitely seems important to communicate with the artist. It’s really interesting to see that U.S. Figure Skating does have licenses with ASCAP and BMI, removing that necessity in some instances. It makes me wonder if there are some practices in settings like this that could help all Olympic athletes so that they all had similar access to music. I hope copyright laws can become more straightforward and less of an obstacle.
Copyright is a big issue for any large event like this. Especially when the very nature of the Olympics involves having athletes from all different countries, each with its own copyright laws. In general it seems like the copyright procedures of many places aren't set up for the idea of a live worldwide event that isn't itself in charge of ensuring copyright is being followed. McKinnon probably knew that someone was licensed to use his music but didn't know it was going to be used as part of the Olympics. Ultimately I think that with the complexity of copyright laws and the sizes of teams involved it seems like an inevitability that some misunderstandings are bound to happen. I personally think that it would have been more prudent to reach out first (either to the record label to ensure that they really didn't have the rights or directly to the Olympics) rather than taking the issue public without knowing for sure what was happening. It seems that in the age of social media people are increasingly willing to take things that could be a simple misunderstanding and airing it for the world to see.
What I am still the most confused about is how it’s anything remotely bad for your music to be used for this purpose? This is such a massive promotion to their music I don’t understand how this all causes so much drama. In the same breath, copyright is so complicated. It is massively confusing and reading this article did not get me much closer to wrapping my head around how music copyright for such large events gets sorted. The amount of minion promotion this Olympic season, and partially last, has been quite surprising to me. I don’t understand how they got so involved, just that it’s all another way to make money and drive an audience. Nonetheless, the question of copyright is still mind boggling to me here. There should be better communication if this is something that the skaters have to decide individually instead of being handled on behalf of everyone.
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