You keep your New Year’s celebration. For me, today is all about celebrating Public Domain Day!
This has become one of my favorite yearly posts. Every year for the last few years, music from 95 years previous has entered the public domain in the US. 2026 is no exception, welcoming all works published in 1930.
We are firmly into the golden years of the Great American Songbook – there were new musicals on Broadway in 1930 from Swift & James, Cole Porter, and the Gershwin Brothers (the classic Girl Crazy – which introduced “But Not For Me”, “Embraceable You”, and “I Got Rhythm”!!!), among others. Here’s a sampler of the songs that are now freely available for “derivative” use. *
Body and Soul (Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Robert Sour and Frank Eyton)
Embraceable You (George & Ira Gershwin)
Georgia on My Mind (Stuart Gorrell & Hoagy Carmichael)
Get Happy (Ted Koehler & Harold Arlen)
I Got Rhythm (George & Ira Gershwin)
Love For Sale (Cole Porter)
On the Sunny Side of the Street (Dorothy Fields & Jimmy McHugh)
Three Little Words (Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby)
These are all songs with iconic, indelible versions by the great jazz and pop singers of the 20th Century. Fitzgerald. Sinatra. Tormé. Holiday. Cole. Vaughan.
There are a lot more songs on this list (and follow the links to full scores from shows).
The newly free material is a gift to arrangers seeking to explore the Great American Songbook without fear of copyright infringement. I arranged at least one song from the 1929 list last year, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few of these songs in new arrangements by me in the near future. (And heads up, next year’s list is full of indelible songs from Gershwin, Porter, Fields/McHugh, Rodgers/Hart, and more!)
A quick side note: composers will be more interested in the poetry side of the public domain; there are newly available poems by W.H. Auden, Hart Crane, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Sara Teasdale, and others.
* About “derivative” works. Arrangements are creative works like any other (I like to say, the only difference from an original composition is who created the melody). However, because someone else created the song you are arranging, the completed arrangement is the literal property of the copyright holder (the composer, descendants, or a third party). That means your ability to publish, distribute, or otherwise make any money as an arranger is contingent on the copyright holder and you don’t retain possession of your creation when it’s all over. That these works are entering the public domain is a massive boon for arrangers like me who enjoy exploring new ideas within the Great American Songbook.