How does one go about researching if a song is in the public domain or if rights are still owned by someone?
I seem to remember this being touched on here once several years ago, but I can't remember what was said. Thanks, Tommee

Hey Tommee,
You can start by going to WWW.bmi.com and do a search on the song title.
Jude

The Harry Fox agency represents song publishers. You can find them on the Web and search by song title. I would back this up with a check at the Copyright Office, see links 1 and 2. 1 is their catalog. 2 is a link to information on works before 1978.

I would suggest going a little further than BMI, Ascap, and Harry Fox, because anyone can copywrite anything - they'll take the money - it's not really their job to make sure someone did indeed write a song. If you search something obviously in public domain (like Sally An), you'll find lots of people have copywritten it. Only comes into play if someone challenges it. Point is, if you think it might be PD, try to find a source for the song older than the person claiming authorship. There's a few online trad data bases you can search through.
Steve

Hi Jude, good to hear from ya!
Thanks everybody for the information!
Tommee