When is recorded music in the public domain

Many individuals have personal analog or digital multi-track systems and know how to use them. These recordings should be good enough for school projects, local cable TV, and other local or non-professional needs. Probably the best way to find out about inexpensive recording is to talk with the musicians at your church or go to a club where local rock bands perform. Teenage bands usually know all the "good and cheap" places to record, and local bands often will make made excellent low cost home or studio recordings.

If you hang-out a while in the keyboard section of your local music store like Guitar Center or Mars , you can probably meet a number of musicians with home MIDI studios. Many of these guys are willing to work for quite reasonable prices. Before you make any agreements, be sure to listen to work previously done by both the musicians and the studio. Generally a good musician and good sound engineer are more important than fancy equipment.

That length of time is usually around 50 to 75 years, depending on the country. As of , in the U. Before we go much farther, a quick note: a sound recording the actual recording of a song is a separate entity from a song the lyrics and melody. This is an important distinction, because if you want to use a track in your video, both the song AND the sound recording must be in the public domain. Luckily there are a number of places you can find free public domain recordings.

Some of these websites are better than others and there are a lot to choose from, but here are a few for starters:. Both of those things often mean low quality. Remembering that a song and its recording must be in the public domain for you to use it, you might find yourself wading through a lot of very old recordings. In Canada, copyright protection expires 50 years after the death of all authors. Music and lyrics enter the public domain when all possible copyright protection has expired.

Check out our Public Domain Music Lists. Pay music royalties to no one. But we have thousands of professional music tracks you can license instantly for your video or voice-over project. Listen and use only the very best music! Wow, I can hardly wait. So until that magic date in , pre sound recordings are protected by a panoply of state laws antipiracy and unfair trade practice laws, for example , some of which are quite strict.

Trust me. Like this one. Not only that, folks, but the New York State Court of Appeals has decided that NY state law even applies to non-US sound recordings that are in the public domain in their own countries. Other states could probably would decide similarly. As I said above, the vast majority of sound recordings will not enter the US public domain until Feb.

Published means distributed to the public. All sound recordings made before have the same cutoff date Sound recordings published on or after Feb. So the earliest date any of these could enter the public domain is January 1,