During the holidays people have an almost insatiable appetite for the same repertoire of songs. That’s good news for you if you want to create your own Christmas cover songs. Fans will love them; new audiences might be able to discover your music when searching for holiday favorites on Spotify, Pandora, or CD Baby; and you might even find some licensing opportunities in film, TV, or commercials.
But before you record your own version of a Christmas classic, you should know whether you’re going to need a mechanical license in order to distribute the track.
With CD Baby’s cover song licensing service, we make it simple.
You can distribute AND license your cover song single during the same signup process.
There’s just a one-time fee, and then we’ll take care of the rest, securing the required mechanical license and paying the royalties you owe to publishers directly from your sales revenue, so you don’t have to deal with constant accounting headaches.
Okay, so about those 23 most popular Christmas cover songs you need a license to sell — here they are:
- Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
- Christmas Song
- Do You Hear What I Hear
- Feliz Navidad
- Frosty The Snowman
- Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
- Here Comes Santa Claus
- Holly Jolly Christmas
- It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
- It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
- I’ll Be Home For Christmas
- Jingle Bell Rock
- Last Christmas
- Let It Snow
- Little Drummer Boy
- Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree
- Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
- Santa Baby
- Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
- Silver Bells
- Sleigh Ride
- White Christmas
- Winter Wonderland
Remember, if a song isn’t on this list, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s is in the Public Domain (meaning it’s so old that the copyright has expired). You might still have to secure a mechanical license to distribute the tune. Do your research first.
Here’s a good start to finding out which holiday songs need licenses to record — and which don’t: “Christmas Songs in the Public Domain (and those that aren’t).”
It’s a free downloadable PDF that 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. If the song you want to sell is NOT in the Public Domain, remember — CD Baby now makes it easy and affordable to license AND distribute your cover song single from the same account. Get started HERE.
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.