On The Media: "Happy Birthday to You" is one of the most popular songs in the English language. It is also copyrighted. On the Media producer PJ Vogt investigates the long, surprising, and contentious history of the argument over just who owns the rights to the song.
5 comments:
We discussed this with Sarah Pickett in PTM class when she came to lecture. For some reason, we ended up on the topic of copyright and copyright infringement when we discussed composing and using music in plays/musicals. I find it to be really interesting that although this song has been around for SO long, it is not able to be used freely. I'm trying to think about all of the times that I have heard this piece sang in a performance and to be honest, it actually seems to be very few. If it has been, I believe it was written into a script. This makes me wonder if the theatre has to pay for every time they sing this song, or if they are paying for the use of it by paying to produce the script? This is very interesting and I feel like it could be a constant debate for years on end.
While generally I am all for songs being copyrighted there are two that I feel have no grounds what so ever to be so. The ABC Song and Happy Birthday. Those are the very first songs you learn as an American kid and you dont learn them from any one artist, you learn them by word of mouth and just from the people around you. We hardly ever hear them sung by anyone singing them as artists. It is not anyones original work, at least not anyone from the last century, so it should just be public domain. And it is very frustrating that somehow the copyright is always able to be extend even after it should have expired like any normal song that actually deserves a copyright would be. Happy Birthday is one of the few things in this world that, to the general public anyway, is not about making money, its sad that its not free. I am interested to see how much money is being taken in from holding that copyright, im sure it must seem worth it for the people that are making the profit.
This is absolutely ridiculous. We talk a lot about copyright infringement in the Roots of Rock n Roll class, and Happy Birthday comes up quite a bit. It is a very interesting topic because if you listen to songs, they are inspired by previous artists and music. You can take a song all the way back to slave songs, hymns, etc. Even in this clip, the narrator said that the women took church music, ADAPTED it, and created Happy Birthday. If you think about it, the song is not authentic/original. Nothing is. Artists are always inspired, either consciously or subconsciously, by others around them. The key word is "adapted." A slight change in melody or lyrics is now considered original and new. With Happy Birthday, there is also the issue of time. The song is used everyday for years. It has become a common song that everyone knows. This copyright is absolutely ridiculous, because the melody and lyrics are common knowledge. I'm actually surprised that no one has responded to the copyright by saying that every version of the song is original because of the slight change in names and singers.
I think there were good intentions for the artist to copyright the song in the first place, but come on. It's been around for so long and used to frequently that it might as well just be put under a public domain of sorts. That song must get sung over 100 times ever single day in the US. It's not like there can be a secret Men-in-Black-type service that can mysteriously show up at every birthday party and charge the singers an amount of money for using that song.
For years I have been wanting someone to come up with a better birthday song than "Happy Birthday." How that song persists as the one song absolutely everyone knows is beyond me. It's hard to imagine but people used to celebrate birthdays for thousands and thousands of generations without this song to help them along, at Chilis or anywhere else. Far from being rewarded for this song, I think every time a restaurant breaks out into song disrupting my digestive reverie, whoever owns the rights should be publicly flogged. The kicker of course is that it's a corporation that claims to be able to collect money based on the use of this song, the true creators who might have had some claim to ownership having long ago gone to the great clappy-singing-table-for-eight-in-the-sky. I don't know if I've mentioned before how ridiculous I find any corporate claim like this (oh right, only every week since September), but I understand it's the world we live in. I think the best way to rebel against this thievery of our common culture would be for someone to come up with something to sing on a birthday that doesn't suck in an absolute kind of way. Or better yet, how about a moment of silence and reflection on your birthday this year instead of obligatory mirth? What do you have to be so damn happy about anyways? Happy birthday indeed.
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