How to Tell If a Song Is Copyrighted: 6 Practical Checks

If you want to know how to tell if a song is copyrighted, start from this rule: almost every song you hear is. In the US (and in the roughly 180 countries that follow the Berne Convention), copyright exists automatically the moment a song is fixed in a tangible form, written down or recorded. No registration, no © symbol, no notice is required. A song posted yesterday by a bedroom producer with 40 followers is just as protected as a chart hit.

So the real questions are different: who owns this song, do you have permission to use it, and is it one of the rare cases where nobody owns it anymore? The six checks below answer those questions in order, using free tools anyone can access. They will not make you a copyright lawyer, but they will stop the most common and expensive mistakes.

This is general information about US copyright, not legal advice. Rules differ by country, and for anything commercial with real money attached, a short consultation with a lawyer is cheap insurance.

First, Understand That Every Song Has Two Copyrights

Most confusion about music copyright comes from not knowing this. A recorded song carries two separate rights:

Copyright	What it covers	Usually owned by	Who tracks it
Musical composition	Melody, harmony, lyrics	Songwriters and publishers	PROs (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR), publishers
Sound recording	That specific recorded performance	Artist or record label	Labels, distributors, Content ID

Both must be cleared for most uses. If Beethoven's Fifth is public domain as a composition, a 2019 orchestral recording of it is still protected as a sound recording. If you record your own cover of a copyrighted song, you own your recording, but the composition still belongs to the songwriter. Keep both columns in mind through every check below.

What You Need

• The song file or a link to it
• A free account on YouTube (for the Studio check)
• 15 to 30 minutes per song

Check 1: Identify the Song Exactly

1. Get the exact title, artist, and songwriters. Use Shazam, SoundHound, or Google's "Search a song" feature if you only have the audio. A track's credits on Spotify, Apple Music, or Discogs often list songwriters and the label separately from the performer.
2. Note the release year and the label. These tell you who probably owns the recording, and the year matters for the public domain check later.
3. Find where you got it. A link from a "free music" channel, a stock site, or a friend's Google Drive is a lead about licensing, not proof of it. Write the source down.

Tip: If you cannot identify a song at all, you cannot clear it. Treat unidentifiable music as unusable.

Check 2: Search Songview (ASCAP and BMI)

1. Open Songview. It is the joint database ASCAP and BMI launched in December 2020, searchable from BMI's repertoire site (Songview is the default search mode) and from ASCAP's Repertory search.
2. Search by title, then narrow by writer or performer. Popular titles have dozens of unrelated songs with the same name, so match the writers you found in Check 1.
3. Read the ownership shares. Results list writers, publishers, and each organization's share of the work. Entries where ASCAP and BMI agree on the data are marked with a green check.

Tip: A Songview result tells you who owns and administers the composition, which is who you would contact for a sync license. It does not mean you have permission, and it says nothing about the sound recording.

A missing result does not mean "free". Songview only covers works represented by ASCAP, BMI, and participating societies. Plenty of songs sit with SESAC, GMR, foreign societies, or with independent writers who joined no organization at all, and they are protected all the same.

Check 3: Search the US Copyright Office Records

1. Use the Copyright Public Records System. It covers registrations from 1898 to 1945 and from 1978 to the present. Search by title, claimant, or registration number.
2. For 1946 to 1977, use the Virtual Card Catalog. It covers card records from 1870 to 1977, which matters for older songs where renewal records once decided whether protection continued.
3. Treat a registration as strong evidence of a claim, not as the only kind. Registration is optional, so many protected songs have no record here at all. What a record gives you is a named claimant and a date.

Check 4: Test It in YouTube Studio

1. Upload a short test video as Private. A static image with the audio is enough. Do not publish it.
2. Wait for the Checks step to finish. Checks scans the upload against Content ID's reference database before the video goes public, and lists any claims with the claimant and the matched timestamps.
3. Read the claim, if any. It names the asset and the claimant, which often tells you exactly who controls the recording.
4. Check the YouTube Audio Library as an alternative. If you only need music for YouTube, tracks from the Audio Library inside YouTube Studio are cleared for use and monetization on YouTube; Creative Commons tracks in it require the credit line Studio provides.

Tip: No claim is not the same as no copyright. Not every recording is registered with Content ID, and manual claims can still arrive after publishing. Checks catches problems; it does not grant permission. Our guide to Content ID claims on AI music explains what happens when a claim does show up.

Check 5: Read the Actual License

If you got the song from a library, a creator, or a "free music" site, there should be license text. Find it and read it.

1. Confirm the license comes from the real owner. A YouTube video titled "no copyright music" is not a license. A license page on the artist's or label's own site is.
2. Identify the license type. For Creative Commons, the suffixes matter:

License	You must	You cannot
CC0	Nothing (rights waived)	n/a
CC BY	Credit the creator as specified	Skip attribution
CC BY-SA	Credit, and share adaptations under the same license	Relicense your adaptation
CC BY-NC	Credit	Use it commercially (monetized videos, ads, client work)
CC BY-ND	Credit	Edit, remix, or cut it

3. Check the permitted uses. Royalty-free and stock licenses commonly limit platforms (some exclude live streaming or broadcast), project counts, or whether the license survives cancelling a subscription.
4. Save a copy. Screenshot or download the license page with the date. Terms change, and the version you agreed to is what protects you in a dispute.

Tip: "Royalty free" describes how you pay, not whether a song is copyrighted. Royalty-free music is owned by someone; you are buying permission. The distinctions are laid out in no copyright music: myth vs reality.

Check 6: Apply the US Public Domain Rules

Public domain is the only category of music that is truly free for anyone to use, and the rules are more specific than "old songs".

1. Compositions published in 1930 or earlier are public domain in the US as of 1 January 2026. That year added Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" and "Embraceable You", Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia on My Mind", and "Body and Soul". Each 1 January, another year joins.
2. Sound recordings follow a separate schedule. Under the Music Modernization Act, recordings published before 1923 entered the public domain in 2022, and recordings from 1923 to 1946 get 100 years of protection. As of 2026 that means recordings published in 1925 or earlier are free, including Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong's 1925 "St. Louis Blues". Recordings from 1947 to 1956 get 110 years, and everything from 1957 to 15 February 1972 stays protected until 15 February 2067.
3. Check the recording, not just the song. A 1930 composition performed on a 1965 record is still protected as a recording. Film soundtracks are an exception that follow the film's term, so a 1930 film soundtrack entered the public domain in 2026, while a standalone 1930 record stays protected until 2031.
4. Watch for new arrangements. A modern arrangement of a public domain song can carry its own copyright in the new material. Sheet music editions and orchestrations are often newer than they look.
5. Remember the borders. Public domain status is national. A work free in the US can still be protected in the UK or EU, where terms usually run 70 years after the author's death.

Works created by US federal government employees as part of their job, such as many recordings by military bands, are also public domain in the US.

Putting It Together: A Quick Decision Table

What you found	What it means
Song identified, owner listed, no license from them	Copyrighted, not cleared. Do not use.
Content ID claim in Checks	A rights holder controls the recording. Use only with their license.
License from the true owner covering your use	Cleared, within the license terms. Keep a copy.
Composition 1930 or earlier, recording 1925 or earlier	Public domain in the US. Free to use there.
Old composition, newer recording	Composition free, recording protected. Record your own version or license it.
Unknown song, unknown source	Treat as copyrighted and unusable.

When the Answer Is "You Cannot Use It"

Most of the time these checks end the same way: the song is owned, and licensing it for a video, ad, or stream is either expensive or impossible for an individual creator. The practical alternatives are a reputable library license, public domain recordings, or music you create yourself.

Making your own is easier than it used to be. An AI music generator running locally, like Song Creator Pro, produces original tracks from a text description or your own lyrics on your Windows PC, with a commercial license included in the one-time purchase. Because the track did not exist until you generated it, there is no prior owner to look up. Two honest caveats: purely AI-generated audio is not copyrightable in the US, so you cannot stop others from reusing it (details in who owns AI-generated music), and you should prompt for styles rather than imitating a specific famous song, which is how AI tracks most often run into existing copyrights.

For platform-specific rules, see royalty-free music for TikTok and Instagram Reels, DMCA-free music for Twitch, and can you monetize AI music on YouTube.

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Ready to skip the detective work? Get Song Creator Pro on the Microsoft Store, a one-time purchase of $49.99 with a free trial. Generate original music offline on your Windows PC with a commercial license included, so the only owner you ever need to check is you.