>>15813003The argument all the way back to the 1980s has always been that it would be expensive to do that for weekly TV. The Road Warriors were coming out to Iron Man in both the AWA and NWA, but Vince wouldn't pay for it even back then (to be fair, neither would Ted, which is why both they and the Midnight Express eventually got sound-alike themes in WCW). ECW did it, but not so much because Heyman was paying royalties, but because Hardcore aired on minor TV stations in late night and nobody with the music labels noticed.
Hell, WWE won't even pay the royalties on the stuff in the tape library, which is why all the old JCP and ECW stuff (or the few cases where Vince actually did use it in WWF, like Ricky Steamboat) has the original audio edited out in favor of generic music and fake crowd noise.
Tony Khan does pay for licensed music (hell, he's paying the exorbitant royalties for Final Countdown for Danielson), but until AEW demonstrates that it's financially viable in the long term, the fact that he's doing it is not really a solid argument.
