About
Thanks and Welcome
Thanks for visiting our site. This is the result of hours of music love, and hard work. I created this collection with help from Eric Din and Dan Della Ripa. We listened to thousands of songs and posted the ones we thought were worthy of hosting.
This site wouldn’t be possible without the Yahoo WebPlayer, and the Muzic Collection at the Internet Archive.org.
About this music
Works that are “publicly available” in the context of intellectual property law:
They are intangible to private ownership.
They are available for use by members of the public.
The songs posted here are from our past. Thanks to the most modern technology you can learn about this wonderful music.
I hope by posting these music treasures, their magic will be kept alive.
Their individualism and creativity should be recognized and appreciated, rather than lost to time.
This site in no way grants or purports to grant any license in the material that is made available only for your edification.
All the material posted on the site is considered “with artist permission.”
Please contact the artist or the artist representatives for any further information.
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
Mr. Kaufman,
I am so glad I stumbled onto this site! I was looking for some really good early big bang/vocal jazz music for my short film that I could use in order to submit it to the Boston Film Festival. I wanted to let you know that I would like to use on of the songs you’ve posted and that I assumed with one the bylaws you have on the site being “They are available for use by members of the public,” that I could do so. However, if this is a problem, please let me know and I will remove it from my short.
Best,
Anna Pinchuk
Hi Anna,
Glad you enjoy the site and the music! As for your question, you must do your own research to determine if this qualifies for the specific use you want.
Hello!
I loved your site!!
All these songs are free to use in a short video clip I want to make?!
Thanks!!
Hey Dimitris, Thanks for visiting, glad you’re enjoying the music here!
You’ll have to do your own research to determine if a song qualifies for the specific use you want.
Hi guys! I have just stumbled on to your site and i must say it looks brilliant, but i have a problem, every time i try to play a song it won’t play, do i have to download a compatible player for them! Please help me with this problem as i would love to download some of these classics onto my p.c. library, thanks!
Hi Mick,
You should be able to download the files by Right-Clicking on them and then hitting “Save As” (or on Mac, ctrl-click “Save Link As”)
Hope that helps! Cheers, thanks for visiting.
Wow thank you for this. This is awesome. Very very very great songs here…
Thank you, Pierre! We love ‘em too.
THANK YOU. In times past we would have taken goats apart to appease you but alas all we can do now is send a few bytes and hope it shows some measure of our gratitude.
Thanks again
H
Thx! Gobble gobble!
Hi there,
Thank you for your hard work compiling these audios.
Could i use this audio to make a video clip and post it in video sharing sites e.g youtube, vimeo etc.
Thanks in advance!
Hi! I hope you can help me. We used a few of these old timey songs for a nonprofit project several years back. We think that one of the songs we downloaded at the time (this was in 2009) was called “Human Target.” It’s no longer part of your website that we can find, but there is another company claiming they own the rights to it and that we stole it. It’s kind of fishy. I’d love to know if it was once in the public domain. Can you please help? They are demanding nearly $4,000!
Dear Eric, what an unfortunate situation. This is why we stress you do your own research. Publicdomain4u.com doesn’t make any representation that the music we offer for free download can be licensed for video uses.
Dear Public Domain 4U:
I am a librarian at a public high school. We recently installed a new phone system and my principal hates the hold music. He charged me with finding something good. He is retiring in a few months and I wanted to surprise him with something authentic (his tastes run to James Brown and Memphis Soul).
Can I use the music I’ve found on your site for this purpose? I was told the song had to be in the public domain.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Matt Cadorette
Librarian
Waterford High School
Matt, I’d love to help, but I’m not sure if this site’s music can be used for this without more research on your part.
Good day,
I stumbled on to this site on accident when I was searching for free music to put on my blog. My blog deals with movie and music reviews and a little inspirational pick me ups for our youths today. I love the songs of the past and would like to share it for others to listen to. Are these songs available for use in blogs?
Regards,
Mort
Hi there, thankyou for this beautiful resource of music. Truly you have found and chosen some real honest material. Oh, straight to the heart. And the rhythm and melodies and stories….. im thankful and hopeful that these will never be lost.
Ps, just a little note about your programming and website. When the songs play on the player and the new post and previous post are shown (the previous and next song), they are reversed. So the previous post, is actually the song to come, and the next post, is the song thats already been. Im not sure whether its just my browser. But im using Firefox in any case.
Thanks again.
Katri, thanks for the love.
Hi,
I stumbled upon this site looking for music to use for a short film… and I believe that you have misrepresented this website. You claim this music is in the public domain and free for use by members of the public, however you also contradict this. In order for music to be truly in the public domain, it would be free for any use regardless, and permission would not be needed from the artist. This website has just greatly confused me, as you claim all over the site that this is public domain music when in fact it’s really not.
Dear Ruby,
The public domain laws vary by country and composition. Our purpose is to educate people about the wonderful music from our past. This music can be downloaded as an mp3. Sorry for not being able to offer this music for video license.
Hello,
I would like to use the piece of music “When the levee breaks” of Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie as a background music for a video of a school-robotic-project and publish this video on the school homepage. May I use the music for this?
best regards
Rita Heider
I’m currently selecting video clips I have all permissions for to produce a 3-min showreel to put onto youtube as unlisted and attach to my website or perhaps just to embed it on my website. Am I right in thinking that the music on this site is free for me to use as an audio soundtrack to my video? And would i just credit the music used in the usual way?
Hi Tom, you need to do your own research into the ability to use this music in films or videos. This site in no way can grant licenses to use this music.
Hi, We are interested in the following tracks on your site:
http://publicdomain4u.com/duke-ellington-washington-wobble/mp3-download
http://publicdomain4u.com/duke-ellington-jubilee-stomp/mp3-download
and would like to get permission to use parts of the track for commercial purposes. Do you know who I contact to get these permissions?
I look forward to hearing from you soon
Hello!
Im interested in licensing music from your side and I did quick research via google and havn’t found the new owners contacts. Any chance you can advice me where look at?
You got the permissions somehow, perhaps you can help here?
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your question, we’d like to help, but we don’t have the right to grant any rights involving these songs.
Music makes me calm, and thank you for being one of my resources where I can enjoy listening to the music I desire free of charge.
Glad we can contribute to mental health.
Music is a wonderful art form.
I really interested in these music and I want to download them is there anyway to dowload the music from this site? If yes can you teach me how to download it thanks you very much.
Hi Viet Thuan,
All you need to do is Right-click, “Save As” (or Mac equivalent) on the play/download mp3 links, to save the files.