To check if a song is copyrighted, start by assuming it is, then confirm ownership and status by searching the U.S. Copyright Office’s Copyright Public Records System, the ASCAP and BMI repertory databases, and the song’s publication date against public domain rules. Copyright attaches automatically the moment a songwriter records or writes down an original piece of music, so the absence of a © symbol or a formal registration doesn’t prove a song is free to use.
Start From the Assumption That It’s Copyrighted
Copyright protection begins the instant someone captures an original musical work in a fixed form, whether that’s an audio recording, notation on paper, or a saved digital file. No application, registration, or © symbol is required.
Copyright notice has been optional for any work published on or after March 1, 1989, when the U.S. joined the Berne Convention. Before that date, omitting notice could cause a loss of protection in some conditions. After it, the absence of a notice tells you nothing. Most songs published since 1989 are protected regardless of whether anyone stamped a © on them.
Every song also involves two separate copyrights, and you may need to check both. One covers the musical composition (the melody, lyrics, and arrangement), usually owned by the songwriter or publisher. The other covers the sound recording (the specific studio performance and mix), usually owned by the recording artist or label. You may be free to use an old melody but still need permission for a particular recorded version of it.
Search the U.S. Copyright Office Records
The U.S. Copyright Office maintains public records of every registered copyright. Registration isn’t required for copyright to exist, but it creates a searchable public record of who claims ownership.
Go to copyright.gov and use the Copyright Public Records System (CPRS). You can search by song title, author name, keyword, or registration number. Results show the copyright claimant, registration date, and a description of the work. The system covers registrations from 1898 to 1945 and from 1978 to the present.
Records from 1946 to 1977 fall in a gap between the digitized sets. The Copyright Office’s physical card catalog covers 1870 through 1977, but it has historically been available only in person at the Copyright Reading Room in Washington, D.C. Digitized volumes of the Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) for that era are searchable through the Internet Archive and Google Books, which can help you find registration and renewal information for older songs.
If you’d rather not dig through records yourself, you can pay the Copyright Office to search for you. The fee is $200 per hour with a two-hour minimum. That adds up fast, so a self-search through CPRS is worth trying first.
One critical caveat: not finding a song in the Copyright Office database does not mean it’s uncopyrighted. Many works are never registered, and copyright exists whether or not the owner filed paperwork.
Search ASCAP and BMI for the Composition Owner
Performing rights organizations (PROs) track who owns the composition side of a song. The three major U.S. PROs are ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, and the first two offer free online databases that are often more practical than the Copyright Office for identifying rights holders.
ASCAP’s ACE Repertory tool at ascap.com/repertory lets you search by title, performer, writer, publisher, or work ID. BMI’s Songview search at repertoire.bmi.com offers similar filters. BMI and ASCAP have combined their data so that Songview displays aggregated copyright ownership information for roughly 40 million musical works across both repertoires, including a breakdown of ownership shares by PRO. If a song appears in either database, you’ll see the writers, publishers, and their respective ownership percentages.
These databases cover the composition copyright only. They won’t tell you who owns the sound recording.
Identify the Sound Recording Owner
For recording ownership, check the liner notes or digital metadata of the specific release. Streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music display songwriter and publisher credits in their track metadata. The credits aren’t always complete, but they’re a useful starting point. If they list a publisher, that publisher is almost certainly the entity you’d contact for a composition license. If they list a record label, that label likely controls the sound recording rights.
You can also look up the song’s International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) through the IFPI’s search tool at isrcsearch.ifpi.org. An ISRC is a 12-character identifier embedded in most commercial recordings, and searching it can reveal the recording’s title, artist, and distributor.
When present, a copyright notice on packaging or in metadata includes three elements: the © symbol (or the word “Copyright”), the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright owner. That gives you an immediate lead on whom to contact.
Check Whether the Song Is in the Public Domain
A song enters the public domain when its copyright expires, and anyone can use it freely without permission or payment. The rules depend on when the work was published and whether older formalities were met.
For works created on or after January 1, 1978, copyright lasts for the author’s lifetime plus 70 years. Joint works last 70 years after the death of the last surviving author. Works made for hire and anonymous works are protected for 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
The simplest rule for older material: musical compositions published in the U.S. before 1931 are now in the public domain. Works from 1930 received a 95-year copyright term that expired at the end of 2025, becoming free to use as of January 1, 2026. Each new year, another year’s worth of publications enters the public domain.
Works published between 1931 and 1977 may or may not be in the public domain depending on whether the copyright was properly renewed. Under the old law, copyrights had to be renewed during their 28th year. If the owner missed that renewal, the work fell into the public domain. You can check renewal status through the Copyright Office’s digitized Catalog of Copyright Entries or through Stanford University’s Copyright Renewal Database.
Sound recordings follow a completely different timeline. Before the Music Modernization Act of 2018, pre-1972 sound recordings weren’t covered by federal copyright law at all. The Act created federal protections for these older recordings with staggered expiration dates:
- Published before 1923: federal protections ended December 31, 2021. These recordings are now in the public domain.
- Published 1923–1946: protected for 100 years after first publication (95-year base term plus 5 years).
- Published 1947–1956: protected for 110 years after first publication (95-year base term plus 15 years).
- Published 1957 through February 14, 1972: protected until February 15, 2067.
A composition and its recording can have very different public domain dates. A 1940s melody might be free to use, but a 1940s recording of that melody could remain protected for decades. If you plan to use a specific recording rather than just the underlying song, check both copyrights separately.
Creative Commons and Voluntarily Free Music
Some copyright holders release their music under open licenses rather than waiting for the copyright to expire. Creative Commons licenses are the most common. A CC0 (“No Rights Reserved”) dedication places a work effectively into the public domain, waiving all copyright and related rights so anyone can use the recording for any purpose without permission or attribution. Other Creative Commons licenses allow free use with conditions, such as requiring attribution or prohibiting commercial use.
Platforms like ccMixter, Jamendo, and some SoundCloud tracks offer music under Creative Commons licenses. Always verify the specific license terms on each track before using it, because “Creative Commons” covers a family of licenses with very different permissions.
What to Do When the Status Stays Unclear
Sometimes you’ll exhaust every database, check every liner note, and still not know for certain whether a song is copyrighted or who owns the rights. This “orphan works” problem is more common than you’d expect, especially with recordings from small labels that went out of business or songs by obscure composers who died decades ago.
U.S. copyright law doesn’t provide a safe harbor for orphan works. Even if you conduct a thorough search and can’t find the owner, you still face potential infringement liability if an owner surfaces later. The Copyright Office identified this policy gap in a 2006 report recommending legislative reform. As of 2026, Congress has not enacted orphan works legislation.
The practical default when status is genuinely uncertain: treat the song as copyrighted. If the stakes of your project are high enough to justify the cost, an intellectual property attorney can conduct a more thorough ownership investigation and assess your risk. If the stakes are low, the safer path is to choose a song with clear public domain status or an explicit Creative Commons license.