Find out which Christmas songs are free to record and which require licenses
Recording a holiday tune is one of the best ways to earn new fans during the biggest season of the year for music sales and engagement. A potential listener might search for their favorite Christmas classic on Spotify or iTunes or Amazon, fall in love with YOUR version, add it to a playlist, buy it for a friend, and suddenly they’re interested in hearing your original music too!
But before you choose which Christmas song you’re going to tackle, you should know ahead of time whether or not you’re going to have to pay a publisher/songwriter for the right to record that composition. You’re going to want to dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s.
A good many Christmas and holiday songs (like “Deck the Halls“) are public domain, but many of the more popular tunes (like “Frosty the Snowman“) are copyrighted and need a license.
Find out which holiday songs need licenses to record and which don’t with our free guide: “Christmas Songs in the Public Domain (and those that aren’t).”
This PDF includes:
* A list of popular holiday songs in the Public Domain
* A list of popular, copyrighted Christmas songs
* Composer names for copyrighted holiday songs
Download the free PDF now and see which holiday compositions you can record without paying mechanical royalties!
Examples of Christmas Songs NOT in the PUBLIC DOMAIN:
“All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” (Donald Yetter Gardner)
“Do You Hear What I Hear?” (Noel Regney, Gloria Shayne Baker)
“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” (Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie)
“A Holly Jolly Christmas” (Johnny Marks)
“Carol Of The Bells” (Peter J. Wilhousky, Mykola Leontovich)
Examples of Christmas songs that ARE in the PUBLIC DOMAIN:
“Angels We Have Heard On High”
“Away In A Manger”
“Deck The Halls”
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
“Good King Wenceslas”
For a more complete list, download the free guide HERE.
Once your Christmas song is recorded, distribute it worldwide with CD Baby!
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.