‘Singin’ In The Rain’, ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’, 1929 standard songs and even Popeye and TinTin are now in public domain

nme.com:

Duke University, this includes a huge number of songs that were originally published in 1929. One of the most famous is the classic track ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, which was written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown for Broadway’s Hollywood Music Box Revue.

It also appeared in the film The Hollywood Revue Of 1929, which arrived that same year. Both the song and film are in the public domain as of 2025.Other tracks include Fats Waller, Harry Brooks and Andy Paul Razaf’s ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ and ‘(What Did I Do To Be So) Black And Blue’, alongside Cole Porter’s ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?’, and Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘Waiting For A Train’.George Gershwin’s ‘An American In Paris’ is also listed, as is Jack Yellen and Milton Ager’s ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’, Alfred Dubin and Joseph Burke’s ‘Tiptoe Through The Tulips’, and Maurice Ravel’s ‘Boléro’.As explained by Stereogum, the actual compositions are now in the public domain, but things like Louis Armstrong’s 1929 version of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ are not.

This is because actual sound recordings take a century to lose copyright protection.Because of this, that means a number of sound recordings from 1924 are now free to the public domain, including Al Jolson’s ‘California Here I Come’, George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ and Marian Anderson’s ‘My Way’s Cloudy’.Books from 1929 that are now in the public domain include Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms, and William Faulkner’s The Sound And The Fury.

Films now free of copyright protection include Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail, John Ford’s The Black Watch, Gold Diggers Of Broadway and more.Famous fictional characters are free to use too, including Popeye The Sailor, which first appeared in.