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Is this song public domain? How we decide what to publish

By Taekyung Lee · 2026-10-10

Every one of the demo songs on this site is a melody nobody owns. Deciding that is not always as simple as "it is old". These are the questions we ask before a song goes up, with examples of the ones that nearly caught us. None of this is legal advice; it is the checklist of a small publisher that would rather leave a song out than guess.

1. When did the composer die?

In most of the world, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Japan, a musical work enters the public domain 70 years after the end of the year its composer died. Beethoven (1827), Chopin (1849), Mozart (1791), Bach (1750), Grieg (1907), Tchaikovsky (1893): all comfortably past. Rachmaninoff died in 1943, so his music became free in 2014. Ravel died in 1937; free since 2008. Gershwin died in 1937, which is why we briefly considered Rhapsody in Blue and then took it down: see question four.

For a song with a lyricist as well as a composer, the clock runs from the later death. For traditional songs with no known composer, the melody is public domain by definition, but the particular version you found in a book may not be.

2. When was it published?

The United States uses a different rule for older works: anything published before 1930 is public domain in the US regardless of when the author died, and works from 1930 onward are protected for 95 years from publication. Because our visitors are mostly in the US and Europe, we require both tests to pass: composer dead 70 years, and published before 1930. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an 18th-century text, but the tune everyone sings was arranged by Frederic Austin in 1909. He died in 1952. Published 1909 makes it free in the US; died 1952 made it free in Europe from 2023. It went up this year.

3. Is the melody free but the words not?

Words and music are separate works. "Happy Birthday to You" is the famous case: the melody is from "Good Morning to All" (1893), but the birthday lyrics were claimed under copyright until a court threw the claim out in 2016. We publish no lyrics at all, on any song, which removes the question. It also removes the second most common trap: a translation. The German "O Tannenbaum" is old; a particular English translation may have been written last decade by someone who is very much alive.

4. Is it the melody, or somebody's arrangement?

This is the one that catches careful people. A public-domain melody can be arranged, and the arrangement is a new work with its own copyright. The easy-piano version in a 2015 method book, the choral setting, the film orchestration, the chord chart on a lyrics website: all of these can be protected even though the tune is not. Rhapsody in Blue is a sharp example: Gershwin's own piano version is public domain, but the famous orchestral sound is Ferde Grofé's orchestration, and Grofé died in 1972. We decided we could not publish a simplified version without someone reasonably thinking it was derived from the orchestration, and removed it.

So we never copy an arrangement. Every score here was written by us from the melody: our left hand, our voicings, our simplifications. The melodies we check against public sources; the arrangement is ours. Carol of the Bells is the clearest case of why this matters: Leontovych's melody (1914, died 1921) is free, but the English words and the arrangement that everyone knows are Peter Wilhousky's from 1936, and his estate enforces them. A new arrangement of the bare melody without the words would be legal; we have not published one, because the line between "the melody" and "the arrangement everyone knows" is thin for that piece and we would rather not test it.

5. Is the recording or the edition free?

A public-domain piece in a modern printed edition is still public domain, but the engraving, the fingering, the editorial markings and the page layout belong to the publisher. Scanning a page of a 2010 Henle edition and posting it is copying the edition. Typing the notes into notation software and rendering your own page is not. That distinction is why we render everything ourselves from LilyPond source files, and why the converter on the front page deletes your uploads after processing: we do not want to hold copies of anyone's editions, including yours.

Recordings are a separate layer again. A recording of a Bach prelude made in 1995 is protected for decades regardless of Bach. The MIDI files here are generated by us from our own scores and carry no recording rights.

The songs we turned down

For the record, and because people ask: Wheels on the Bus (1939), You Are My Sunshine (1939), Heart and Soul (1938), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1949), Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (1934), Jingle Bell Rock (1957), Feliz Navidad (1970), Kookaburra (1932), and every film, game and pop theme. All of these are requested often and all are still in copyright. Many lyrics sites and YouTube tutorials publish them anyway; their risk tolerance is not ours.

If you want to check a song yourself

1. Find the composer and the lyricist, not the performer. Wikipedia usually has both.
2. Both dead more than 70 full years ago, and the work published before 1930? Melody is free almost everywhere.
3. Make your own arrangement. Do not copy a published one, however simple it looks.
4. Leave out the words unless you have checked the words separately.
5. If you are not sure, leave it out. There are more public-domain tunes than anyone can arrange in a lifetime.

Written by Taekyung Lee, a self-taught pianist (four years, no lessons) who built Notalo for personal practice. About · Instagram

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