As music copyright laws begin to be enforced, challenges abound

It’s hard to imagine what figure skating would be without music.
In the early days of the sport, live bands accompanied skaters when they performed on outdoor rinks. Some pieces of music have become inextricably linked with particular skaters, whether that be “Bolero” with Torvill and Dean, or “Seimei” with Yuzuru Hanyu. Since music with lyrics was allowed in 2014, skaters have branched out, and are now just as likely to choose music by artists like Billie Eilish, Adele, and Elton John as they are to use Tchaikovsky or Ravel.
The legality of all this music, however, has always been murky. While many musicians are content to have skaters use their work in exchange for exposure to new audiences, not everyone feels that way. For example, in 2022, U.S. figure skaters Alexa Kneirim and Brendan Frazier settled a lawsuit from the band Heavy Young Heathens, whose composition they’d used in their Olympic short program.
That lawsuit sent a shiver down the spines of skating’s governing bodies and alerted the ISU and U.S. Figure Skating about the risk involved in not licensing music in the future.
In the spring of 2024, U.S. Figure Skating introduced guidance for the use of music, including the announcement that they had purchased a blanket performance license for music covered by the performing rights organizations BMI and ASCAP. The guidelines advise skaters to protect themselves by using music covered 100% under those agreements, or music that is available through the music licensing service ClicknClear. Importantly, those licenses only cover performance rights, not recording or broadcasting rights, so now any live or on-demand streaming of U.S. Figure Skating-sponsored events is not allowed to include music. This restriction does not include the events broadcast on NBC, such as Skate America and U.S. Nationals, but it has meant that there are no live streams for U.S.-based Challenger Series events and the National Qualifying Series.
As this impact begins to be felt, the question of copyrights is looming large over the sport. How can skaters, choreographers, competition organizers, TV broadcasters – and the musicians themselves – find a way to each benefit from the use of music in skating? The answers aren’t easy, but in the world of live streaming and social media, the sport is going to need to find a path forward.
Fully Aware of Their Obligations?

In 2022, the band Heavy Young Heathens sued American pair skaters Alexa Knierim and Brendan Frazier, U.S. Figure Skating, and broadcaster NBC, alleging illegal use of their version of the folk song “House of the Rising Sun” during the Olympic Team Event Short Program. The band, consisting of brothers Robert and Aron Marderosian, contended that Knierim and Frazier “were fully aware of their obligations to obtain clearance and/or authorization for any music they intended to use,” and had not done so.
The complaint added that Kneirim and Frazier “had to declare before skating in any event that the music they were using had been fully cleared and authorized for public use and television and other media exhibition broadcast and re-broadcast throughout the world without further clearance or payments of any kind on the part of the ISU, the Organizing Member, the Organizing Committee or the relevant television network or broadcaster.” They claim to have sent a cease and desist letter to Knierim and Frazier through their agent, which was ignored.
The Team USA skaters and coaches I contacted for this article denied that they have ever been required by the U.S. Federation or by the ISU to state that they have cleared the rights to their music. Their understanding, until recently, was that it was the skaters’ responsibility to provide the song title and artist and that the ISU and/or TV broadcasters were responsible for securing the rights.
They had plenty of reasons not to know otherwise, because of limited and inconsistent attention to the topic. In fact, a 2019 case that the Manderosians brought against German skaters Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nolan Seegart for their use of “House of the Rising Sun” was dismissed in California court for procedural reasons, and did not garner much attention at the time.
When U.S. Figure Skating’s guidance was first released this spring, many skaters and coaches were alarmed. They had already choreographed programs for the coming season – were they supposed to ditch those programs, and swallow the costs involved, if the music wasn’t available through BMI and ASCAP?
According to several Team USA skaters and coaches (who wished to remain anonymous), U.S. Figure Skating reassured them that the policy would not be enforced, for this season at least. As of publication, U.S. Figure Skating has not returned a request for comment.
While the U.S. figure skating community is dealing most obviously with these questions, the ISU is also paying attention and has established its own partnership with ClicknClear. In the announcement for the Junior Grand Prix events, skaters and teams were instructed that they have the responsibility to clear the rights to their music, either through ClicknClear or another method.

According to Team USA sources, the ISU wanted to require proof of copyright starting with this season’s Junior Grand Prix. However, federations resisted, arguing it was too short a notice period, and the ISU backed down from the requirement.
During the broadcast of the Junior Grand Prix in Ostrava, Ted Barton answered a viewer question about music restrictions, noting “The music rights are a big issue right now in our sport. The ISU says that skaters must have their music cleared. Particularly next year – they are asking for it this year as well. So they have a ClicknClear program. That program allows a skater to go in and register their music and see if that program can clear it, or see if there are clearance rights available and how much it will cost. It is becoming completely different. We used to have just classical music, now we have all different types of music. I could see a trend going back to classical, because there is not really much of a fee for classical music, and/or those pieces that are on a musical site, that you can purchase the rights as part of the licensing. That is changing, and we’ll see the impact next season more than this season.”
The U.S. isn’t the only federation adjusting to this new reality. The German federation works with the performing rights organization GEMA to clear music for the national team, and skaters know that music in the GEMA database will be okay for them to use.
Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin had to change one of the pieces of music used in their free skate shortly before the 2024 Nebelhorn Trophy because, despite months of research, a final clarification of the music rights could not be made. “This is like the biggest problem in our sport,” commented Hase. “No one really knows how exactly [it] works with the music rights.”
Several European coaches I spoke with over the summer were unfamiliar with the ISU’s new policy and believed that the music copyright issue only impacted Americans. This suggests that much more education will be required before the ISU can begin enforcing copyright law globally.
ClicknClear CEO Chantell Epp acknowledges that need. “There is no right time to implement the solution, right?…Whenever you implement, someone, at some point, is going to have already chosen their music. And so there’s always, with almost every sport we work with, a transition phase, and we really focus heavily on education before the full enforcement really happens.”
To help prepare skaters and their teams, the ISU and ClicknClear have partnered on an elearning module that explains music rights and the responsibilities of skaters and event organizers. That module was made available in Spring 2024, and is accessible to anyone who creates an eLearning profile.

While federations and the ISU may not be actively enforcing the copyright rules, the legal risk still exists for the skaters.
Rob Colling is a musician and music editor who works with many figure skaters, including Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, under the name “The Skating Music Guy”. He has been following the copyright issue closely.
“I’ve always said to my clients, I am providing a service. You send me music files, I do not buy them for you. And I edit them the way you want them edited, and then I send you a thing back, but that’s a service. It’s not a product. And you bear all the responsibility for everything you asked me to do. I think that is the correct legal basis for people like me. But it’s kind of tough because that makes me another person, alongside the Fed, alongside the lawyers, who are just shoveling all the responsibility onto the skaters, and the coaches, and the parents. Now, as a skater or as a parent, or as a coach, you are facing an entire industry and an entire sport that’s always saying to you, ‘Well do what you want, but you bear all the legal responsibility if things go wrong, and it’s nothing to do with us.’”
In a way, Colling notes, “Nothing’s different. It’s always been that most of the skating music that’s used in the world is illegal. That still is the case. [USFS] is just saying, ‘We’re trying to cover you a bit, you know? We’re trying to get this blanket license and make at least some of it legal.’ They’re trying to make it easy. On the whole, it’s kind of a good thing, but there’s also a lot of factors beyond that that they can’t control, and it’s just it’s a difficult situation, and [ends up] in the same place, which is, skaters, coaches, parents, it’s your fault, whatever happens, now you know you take responsibility for it. If you get sued, tough.”
What does U.S. Figure Skating’s deal with BMI and ASCAP cover?

To make sense of this complex situation, we have to understand the different ways that copyright law impacts music in skating.
Michael Goodyear is an expert on music copyright and a fellow at NYU’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy. “There are two types of copyrights that are implicated in a piece of music,” he explained. “There’s the musical work, which is like the composition, the lyrics, all the stuff that actually makes music like on the page of notes, and then there’s the sound recording, which is the specific recording of the music. So you know, if we take a Taylor Swift song, “Love Story,” then the lyrics to “Love Story” would be the musical work, but Taylor Swift’s specific performance has been recorded that would be the standard recording. And copyright also implicates a lot of different rights’ can include a reproduction right, as well as a public performance right, because you are playing it again for the folks to listen to in the audience.”
In the context of figure skating, the most important rights are the right to reproduce (i.e. burn the song onto a CD), the right to create derivative works (to edit a song, for example), and the right to publicly perform (playing the song in a rink). But some common practices, which enable skaters to preserve and share performances, are often not legal. If someone records a video of a performance with sound, this could be an unauthorized reproduction of the music. If someone transmits the video, whether a TV broadcast or a live stream, this could be an unauthorized public performance.
Public performance rights are managed by “Performing Rights Organizations” (PROs) such as BMI and ASCAP. The companies collect royalties on behalf of artists and make it easier for businesses to apply for the right to play music at their events, in their stores, etc.
Goodyear notes that “ASCAP and BMI are the biggest players as licensors of the music public performance license. For many decades, they were so big that courts, back in want to say around 1940, decided that they should have some limitations on what they could license for, due to the monopoly that they had in the industry. So there are set rates that ASCAP and BMI can charge… usually that kind of operates as a ceiling, so no one can go above that.”

By arranging performance rights for all the music that is 100% covered by BMI and ASCAP, U.S. Figure Skating is reducing, but not eliminating, the prospect that skaters, skating clubs, and competition organizers will be liable for violating copyright by playing music in a live venue.
Large arenas and venues will likely have already arranged their own licenses with the PROs, to cover all the music played in the background of events, although perhaps not the music used during skaters’ performances. The smaller venues – the local rinks where everyday training and competition happen – may not have had coverage in the past and may be hard-pressed by financial and staffing limitations to cover them in the future.
One thing that’s important to note is that while licensing may seem like a boon to the artists whose music is licensed, as Rob Colling notes, these licenses aren’t particularly beneficial to most artists.
“It’s a flat fee, and you never say what’s been played in the rink. There’s nothing that allows you to declare that, so they just do a sum back at headquarters, and they just have an algorithm, and they say, ‘There was a load of Beyonce and Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa played this year. So we’ll pay them this percentage, and we’ll pay, Piano Guys and Ludovico Einaudi and Jennifer Thomas this much. It’ll be a tiny amount because they hardly got any play (overall).’ And of course, in that rink, where the positions are completely reversed, Einaudi and Jennifer Thomas and Piano Guys are the bulk of what gets played in most rinks, compared to Dua Lipa and Beyonce. So it’s never been fair to the kinds of artists that get played in skating, we have a different set of choices. We have a different set of preferences. We’re not playing what’s popular in the mainstream all the time.”
Another issue is that, while BMI and ASCAP have large databases, they do not own the performing rights for all artists, and many of the pieces most commonly used in skating are not 100% covered under the license. While the “ClicknClear” service adds additional pieces to the amount of music that is easy to clear it also has many gaps.

A search of the music used by the 2024 U.S. Worlds team found that six skaters/teams out of eleven used music that was not covered under either system. It was sometimes difficult to determine whether a particular performer’s recording was covered, even if a version of the composition was available, further muddying the process.
It also seems likely that not being included in those databases will especially be a problem for the artists who gain the most from skaters using their music. Participants in AnythingGOE’s Discord assisted this research by naming artists and songs they first heard through skating, especially if they now listen to that artist in other contexts. These are musicians who presumably have the most to gain through the exposure of being used in skating. Again, many of these artists – including frequently-used performers like Muse and Woodkid – are not covered under either license.
Colling noted that, while not fully restricting skaters’ choices, the U.S. policy “is going create a sort of mindset that says, ‘I must err on the safe side, we know for certain that this one’s okay, so we’ll use that one.’ And that would be a pity, because I think especially recently, in the last decade or so, people have got more into using new things, pushing the envelope a little bit, and skating to things that have never been used. And it would be a pity if that reversed.”
If you eliminate the ASCAP and BMI database, and restrict the search to the ClicknClear database that the ISU recommends, the selection of music is even more limited. Looking again at the music used by the U.S. World Team in 2023/2024, only one of the thirteen skaters and teams had music in both programs that was available through ClicknClear.
Epps is optimistic that the database will grow rapidly, however. “There are some rights-holders, artists and writers who are sensitive to the way that their music is being used. So there’s always a portion who we can’t pre-clear. But that doesn’t mean we won’t get them in the future, and it doesn’t mean we can’t request. Our catalog is constantly growing. In our internal database, we have over 30 million copyrights. Music rights are basically a massive jigsaw puzzle, and as we find the missing pieces that make the song whole, we can make that music available on the platform. So we are constantly, constantly making the music available.”
“As we sign new deals,” Epps continued, “a big influx of content comes on the platform, and by this time next year, we should have some between five to 10 million tracks live and available on the platform, and so the likelihood of people not finding the music is going to go down. But in the meantime, we have the request feature where they can make a request. It goes to our team, we look into who owns those rights. In some cases, we get bad data from the rights holder that’s prevented it from going live, that gets fixed, we can make it available. In other cases, it helps us identify who we need to negotiate deals with or push on our negotiations with quicker.”
Video Streaming and Copyright

The prospect of enforcement of copyright rules is causing skaters anxiety, but, by and large, has not yet impacted their choices of music.
However, the limitations placed on live streaming and recording of performances are already in effect. For example, a representative of the John Nicks Pairs Trophy confirmed that U.S. Figure Skating’s policy is the reason they did not offer a live stream of the Challenger Series competition.
Since the 2022 Olympics, NBC has limited replays on its Peacock streaming service, often only keeping events up for 24 or 48 hours. This applies not only to figure skating but to nearly all the events from the Paris Olympics.
U.S. Figure Skating’s “Elite Summer Sizzler” show that was broadcast on YouTube in August was available only for a single day.
“I believe it’s something that collecting societies are offering,” said Epps, “kind of like a live stream, [they will] allow a rebroadcast at a specific set time and within a time frame. That is being done in a number of different places. But of course, many sports want the content to live there, for people to access at any time and basically to have an archive.”
Unlike U.S. Figure Skating, Skate Canada has continued to stream and allow replays of domestic competitions this season for free, including with music. Skate Canada declined to answer questions about its DailyMotion channel or any plans to require copyright clearance.
Many European federations work with the service SolidSport to broadcast paid streams for competitions. A SolidSport spokesperson responded to AnythingGOE that “music rights are managed in the same way they are for the in-arena experience. It is the responsibility of the event organizer to ensure they have the appropriate licenses in place for using music during their competitions.”
Licensing music for video content is particularly complex because, in addition to performance rights, it also involves synchronization, or “sync” rights. “Sync rights appeared nowhere in the Copyright Act,” explains Goodyear. “However, courts have kind of come to understand them as something else that the copyright law gives you an exclusive right to if you’re the copyright owner, and these are both for musical works and for sound recordings. And sync rights are a particularly tricky one because you don’t have these larger bodies that are helping negotiate the licenses.”
PROs do not offer sync rights and there is no equivalent service to clear the right to stream video that is synched to music. That means that a film, etc. that is using music must individually clear the right to use the song with each of the rights holders. This can be very expensive and time-consuming – and there is no guarantee the rights holders will agree to the request. In the world of streaming content, sync rights are not only relevant to the producers of commercials, TV, and movies. Anyone using music in their video on social media, YouTube, twitch, etc is now in this position, and may not have the resources to negotiate individual licenses.
“We are falling into a kind of little gap in the copyright industry,” noted Colling. “ I think eventually that gap will be filled. What we need is a two-way street, where the rights flow from the artists and the publishers to the skaters, and the money flows back from the skaters to the artists. And when you’re playing music live in the rink, you have that. You have a two-way street already established and, in fact, you have a traffic cop in the middle of the two-way street, which is the PRO that is managing the flow of all those things…We also need that two-way street when it comes to video, but it’s a different stream, and the PRO isn’t there. There isn’t a traffic cop on that street, yet. There just isn’t a mechanism for doing it.”
Technology can help, and major platforms, such as YouTube, have developed ways to identify, clear, and monetize music used in their videos. According to its website, YouTube’s ContentID system “enables music partners to easily identify and manage their music on YouTube. YouTube scans uploaded videos against a database of music that you’ve submitted. When content in a user-uploaded video matches a work that you own, you get to decide whether to monetize the video, block it, or track it.”
So for example, when you watch a video on a channel like “On Ice Perspectives,” you’ll see a link to the music the skaters are using. A portion of the revenue that the video generates will be directed towards those artists. Of course, not all artists participate in the ContentID system or allow their music to be used in videos, but the system has allowed music content on YouTube to remain viable for both rights owners and content creators.
ClicknClear is hoping to provide a similar service for the ISU-sponsored competitions. “For the most part,” Epps noted, “with the majority of our record labels and music publishers, we have those sync rights to grant the video on demand, and we do also have live streaming rights, and we are working on solutions within figure skating and other sports to share routine content with the music.”
While the federation or event organizer would pay for the sync and streaming rights through ClicknClear, they first would need the athletes to have licensed the song.
“The athlete is responsible for securing a license for their routine,” said Epps, “like they’re responsible for paying for their uniform or their skates. So that is their responsibility, to clear the right to edit and adapt the music, choreograph that piece of music, they need to get an official download from an appropriate source. And that’s really the extent of their responsibility.”
The live performance rights are then the responsibility of the venues, and the live-streaming or video-on-demand rights are the responsibility of the event organizer. But for event organizers to secure those rights, Epps confirmed, “they need to know every single song being used, and then whether or not a sync license is available. Our verification system that the ISU has now implemented, it checks if [the music is] licensed, provides us with all of the music information of all the songs being used within every person’s recording, and whether or not we can easily grant the sync rights or if we need to seek additional approval.”
“Generally, these types of licenses depend on a few different factors,” said Epps “and the overall cost to each event organizer will depend on those factors. Generally, live streaming and video-on-demand, if it is revenue generating, and people are paying subscribers, paying to watch the content, it tends to be a percentage of that revenue. So it’s quite a simple thing.”
Currently, the ISU is gathering this information and learning how much music they will be able to clear.
This year, the ISU has consolidated its YouTube presence into a single channel, which is available worldwide (with content locked in countries with broadcasting rights to the events). With videos of individual performances on the ISU’s channel, YouTube’s ContentID system recognizes and monetizes the music.
At the June 2024 ISU Congress, there was also some discussion about moving competition livestreams to a proprietary platform, which presumably would charge viewers a fee. It’s possible that the need to generate revenue to cover music licensing might encourage the ISU toward a subscription model, although nothing has yet been announced.
What do the musicians think?

Jennifer Thomas is an American pianist and composer whose pieces, such as “A Beautiful Storm” and “The Fire Within” are frequently used in figure skating. Thomas enjoys seeing her work used in other art forms and skating has brought her exposure to new audiences. In particular, after Rika Kihira used her music in 2018, Thomas noticed that her listenership in Japan increased.
“I kind of just have to look at it as great exposure,” she shared, “Because I don’t make money off of it. The skaters aren’t paying me for usage. I’m lucky if I get ASCAP payments that kind of trickle in here and there. So whenever I do talk to skaters, the ones who do ask me, I’m very adamant about please credit properly, because that’s the only way I can get any type of [recognition].”
She noted that at least skating does credit the music used in the on-screen introduction to the performance. “So even if I don’t ever make very much money, I do appreciate that my name was on screen. And figure skating has always been so good about that. But I noticed in the Olympics for gymnastics, I don’t know what their regulations are, but they never, ever credit the music. And that is really, really frustrating.”
While Thomas’ attitude is common to most musicians, it is not shared by everyone. One who has notably protested the use of his music in skating is Joe Hisaishi, the composer of many Studio Ghibli soundtracks.
In 2018, the Canadian skater Kevin Reynolds wrote on his Instagram: “Hi everyone, I have a bit of unfortunate news to share: as a result of an ongoing dispute with one of the shared rights holders of the music, I have been forced to abandon my free skate to Ni no Kuni. I apologize to the many fans who were looking forward to seeing it at the upcoming NHK trophy in Hiroshima. The timing of this is extremely distressing, but I will do the very best that I can in the limited time I have before the event to prepare an alternate free skating program.”
In contrast, Hisaishi did permit Yuzuru Hanyu to use two of his pieces in his “Hope and Legacy” program, when the music editor worked closely with the composer to get the edit approved. In Hisaishi’s case, the concern was more about the artistic integrity of the composition, rather than financial compensation.
Thomas notes that the new rules have created an uptick in requests for permissions. She has experienced more skaters, especially Americans, reaching out to her this season. “I’ve had about three or four U.S. skaters contact me. I think they were just really worried about getting in trouble, and so they said, ‘We searched the ASCAP database and couldn’t find your music. So we’re just contacting you directly to get permission.’ And of course, I said yes, but each one of them was really worried about getting in trouble.”
“I love seeing the music in figure skating,” emphasized Thomas. “And I know it’s all confusing, but hopefully, they can figure it out so that they’re able to post things. Because, even for me, I like to sometimes repost the content, and I can’t if the music isn’t there, so it affects everyone.”
2 Replies to “Making Music in Skating Legal”
As a musician I’ve seen this not only in skating but all over the place, other sports, video games, politics, even other musicians who reuse without credit. The world seems bent on devaluing musicians and their works to such an extent that it’s the default expectation that we must work for free or at best “exposure”. And then AI enters the picture making everything even more devalued to people who just want it for background to their primary purpose, whatever that happens to be. Maybe these people should consider that a solution is to pay composers and arrangers and musicians what they need to produce original works for their specific use.
One of the most in-depth and knowledgeable article I’ve ever read. All the credit to the article author!