Tired of going down the rabbit hole of Google to find the original? Don’t sweat it, here’s how you address it 🌊

The public domain refers to all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. This means that the content or work is not protected by copyright law or other restrictions. You can use these freely, as well as alter, share, copy, or sample the content.

Works remain under copyright for 50-70 years after the original composer’s death, but please note that the year count does depend on the country. After this, works move into the public domain unless the copyright has been extended. If the track is in the public domain, store and territory restrictions no longer apply.

Publishing Details & the C line

Original composers must be credited in the C line and the C line year must be the year in which the composition was composed. This is the same with the Publishing Information of your release.

However, we know it can be sometimes be difficult to know the exact composer – so the choice is yours. You can either put the original composer if you know the name, or your own name, or you can put ‘Unknown‘ in the first name field and ‘Writer‘ in the last name fields, for ‘Unknown Writer’.

If you’re unsure of the composer, in the C line section, please write ‘Traditional’. Regarding the C line year, if you’re using ‘Traditional’ in the name field, then feel free to make a good guess based on the earliest versions that you can find. This isn’t vital, so feel free to put the current year if you can’t find the information or if you’re using your own name for the artist field.

Original Release Date

Just to note, your Original Release Date is when your version of the release was initially made available to the public. This could be either physically or digitally.

Please see our RouteNote Blog post about music now in the public domain!

If you have any further queries, feel free to get in touch with us!

See also:
What does CC/Creative Commons mean?
Can I use a sample in the public domain for my release?
Are Christmas songs covers?