The Songs of 1930 Became Raw Material.

On 1 January 2026, works first published in the United States in 1930 lost their copyright protection. For jazz and popular music this is an unusually rich year: several of the songs that became the standard repertoire — the harmonic furniture that thousands of players learned changes on — are now free to arrange, perform, record and print without a US composition licence. What is not free is almost every version of them you have actually heard.

What actually changed

The class of 1930 arrived under the standard term calculation, which now releases US publications after 95 years. What entered the public domain is the musical composition as published — the notes and the words, the thing printed on the sheet music.

That is a narrower object than most people picture when they hear that a song is public domain. It is the work, not any particular performance of it, and not any particular edition of it.

The songs

The 1930 catalogue includes George and Ira Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, whose chord sequence became the second most-used harmonic template in jazz after the blues. It includes Body and Soul by Johnny Green and Edward Heyman, the ballad that has functioned as a tenor saxophone proving ground since Coleman Hawkins recorded it. And it includes Georgia on My Mind by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.

For working musicians the practical consequence is specific: you can publish a new edition, write and sell an arrangement, perform the tune, and release a new recording of it, without clearing the composition in the United States.

The recording trap

Here is where the reasoning usually fails. Sound recordings in the United States run on a different clock from compositions. Under the Music Modernization Act, older recordings are governed by a 100-year term — which is why recordings from 1925 became free for reuse in 2026, while compositions from 1930 did so in the same year.

Apply that to Georgia on My Mind. The 1930 song is public domain. Ray Charles's 1960 recording is not, and will not be for decades. Nor is any other later recording. Using the composition means making your own version, not lifting somebody else's master.

The rule of thumb worth carrying: recordings first published in 1930 do not enter the US public domain until 2031. In any given year, the compositions and the recordings that open up are from different decades entirely.

The other rights that survive

Copyright can attach separately to arrangements, to modern printed editions, and to any new expressive material added to a public-domain work. A contemporary big-band chart on I Got Rhythm is somebody's copyright even though the tune underneath it is not. A recently engraved edition may carry protection in its own layout and editorial content.

This is why the most defensible reuse starts from an original 1930 source or from an edition you prepare yourself. Working from whatever PDF is circulating imports whatever rights that PDF carries.

Why the date is different abroad

Copyright is territorial, and the 95-year publication rule is a US construction. Many countries calculate protection from the death of the last surviving author — commonly life plus seventy years — which produces entirely different expiry dates for the same song, and dates that vary between co-writers.

Ira Gershwin outlived his brother George by decades, so a life-based term for their joint works runs from a much later date than a US publication-year schedule suggests. Restoration rules can also complicate the status of foreign works inside the United States. A work free to use in one country may still be protected in another, and a release is rarely confined to one country.

The check before you release

Before putting out a score or a recording, identify four things separately: the exact composition and its publication evidence, the authors and their dates, the arrangement or edition you are working from, and the sound recording if you are using one rather than making one.

"The song is public domain" is the beginning of that analysis, not the end of it. The class of 1930 has handed the repertoire a genuinely valuable year — but what it handed over is a set of tunes, not a set of records.