Bob Dylan’s Publisher Seemingly Responsible for Takedown of Zohran Mamdani’s “Times They Are a

On the eve of his New York mayoral election victory, Zohran Mamdani posted an ad on social media soundtracked by Bob Dylan ’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” The video, like much of Mamdani’s campaign, went viral, as its “New York is a-changin’” slogan rapidly spread across social media. By the following morning, however, it had been removed from X with a takedown notice: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright holder.” Unsurprisingly, this was not a snub by Dylan himself but an apparent decision by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), The New York Times reports . In a statement, UMPG, which acquired Dylan’s songwriting catalog in 2020, said, “As a longstanding policy, we do not license Bob Dylan compositions for projects involving political figu