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:
“A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a barroom around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremarked seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)