Beastie Boys Lift Their No-Ads Policy To Allow “Sabotage” In Destiny 2 Promo
Beastie Boys maintain a pretty strict no-ads policy, and it’s rare to hear their music used in promotional videos of any sort. When Adam Yauch died in 2012, his will prohibited the use of any music he made for advertising purposes. Since then, Beastie Boys took Monster Energy Drink to court when the company used one of their songs at a sponsored snowboard competition without the band’s consent. Beastie Boys won the suit and were awarded $1.7 million. The band also went after a toy company called GoldieBlox for copyright infringement when they parodied the song “Girls” in a commercial.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Beastie Boys agreed to license “Sabotage” to 2009’s Star Trek and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond trailer, and now Pitchfork points out that the same song can be heard in a promo for the first-person shooter game Destiny 2. According to AdWeek, the surviving Beasties Ad-Rock and Mike D watched the trailer and gave the advertising agency their blessing to use the song. Watch the trailer below.