Happy Birthday To You
The song "Happy Birthday to You" is the best known song in the world and generates over $2 million in royalties each year for its copyright owners. The original author of the words to the song is unknown; however, the current owner is AOL Time Warner, who receives licensing revenues through the ASCAP. The music itself was written in 1893, and due to multiple copyright extensions, will remain so until at least 2030. In 1989, when Time Warner first purchased the piece, movie licenses for the song were going from anywhere between “a few thousand” to $50,000. One reason the owner, Birchtree Ltd., decided to sell the copyright ownership was because they did not have a large enough unit dedicated to monitor its usage in new media. This became key in maximizing financial benefit, because previous owners failed to go after those who used the song without license for over 20 years.
Read more about this topic: Music Licensing
Famous quotes containing the words happy and/or birthday:
“No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)