Recorded Music – Two Copyrights and Two Public Domain Timelines

Every January copyright geeks, like us here at Crown^®, make note of the list of works entering the public domain.  Once these previously copyright protected works enter the public domain, anyone can use them without the necessity of securing the consent of the author (or the estate of the author) or owner of that work and without paying a license fee.  So, as of January 1, 2025, if you want to make a movie adaptation of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, or package and sell the literary work The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, go right ahead.  No need to contact the Hemingway or Faulkner estates or put in the legwork necessary to track down the copyright owner to secure and pay for a license.

But determining the public domain status of recorded music requires a deeper inquiry because recorded music includes two separate and distinct copyrights – one in the underlying composition, which protects a song’s lyrics and musical arrangement, the other in a particular sound recording of that composition.  For example, Bob Dylan’s song All Along the Watchtower was written and first recorded by Dylan in 1967.  That same song was more famously recorded by Jimi Hendrix a year later, in 1968.  So, Dylan’s copyright in the composition will expire before Hendrix’s copyright in his recording of that composition.  Likewise, U2’s copyright in its 1988 cover of All Along the Watchtower will expire decades after Dylan’s composition enters the public domain.  For more on the two distinct copyrights in recorded music, see our article Types of Copyright in Music & Latest Deals/Examples. 

To add complexity to the analysis of whether a particular sound recording has entered into the public domain, 2018’s Music Modernization Act added years of copyright protection to recordings first made before 1972, with the number of years dependent on exactly when that recording was first made.  Yes, there will be math involved.

So just because you see that a composition has entered the public domain, doesn’t mean that you can freely use any recording of that composition (though you can go ahead and record your own “cover” of that composition without securing a license from the composer).

Here at Crown, we help clients avoid copyright mistakes and we can help determine whether a particular composition and a particular recording of that composition have entered the public domain enabling free use, or whether a license is required.