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Can you find uncopyrighted music recordings?

Started by Query, May 15, 2022, 07:08:28 PM

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Query

I know some of you would like to use free recorded music for skating programs.  (If it is legit, such music might also be usable for other purposes, like online video background music.)

Out of curiosity, I searched Google for

  uncopyrighted music recordings

and found a large set of links, to collections of nominally freely available music recordings.

BUT https://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/links/cached/chapter7/link7.55c.publicdomainmusic.html claims that for the most part, in the U.S.A., between federal and state laws, "There are NO sound recordings in the Public Domain."  Or at least that you would need to pay an expert a significant amount of money to research the public domain status of a given recording.

So does https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2019/02/copyright-breakdown-the-music-modernization-act/ (published by the Library of Congress, a federal agency) though it suggested that (as of the publication of that blog in 2019) some recordings would pass into the public domain within a few years of that 2019, and some people on other websites claim that started in January 2022. But see the comments in that blog, some of which say that they didn't pass into the public domain.

I find it extraordinary how even such basic legal questions have unclear answers under U.S. law. What an incredible muddle!