Our country’s founding fathers always had the intention of protecting the ideas and discoveries of scientists, authors and writers.  As a result, copyright has been apart of United States law since 1790.  In the passing years, copyright has grown to include many other forms of authorship, including art and music.

On this day, February 15th, in 1972, the 1972 U.S. Copyright act granted U.S. federal copyright protection to sound recordings, or phono records, for the first time. Prior to 1972, sound recordings were protected by state laws, but were not included in Federal copyright law.  The delay in sound recording protection came from a lack of federal criteria to establish when a sound recording could be officially considered “published.” The 1972 U.S. Copyright act solved this problem by declaring all existing sound recordings “published.”

All sound recordings are currently under copyright protection in the United States until 2067, which means there are currently no sound recordings in the Public Domain. Sound recording copyright is displayed with a circled P symbol, ℗.