Update — August 2026: AI Country Music is now an on-demand music platform rather than a continuous 24/7 radio station. This article was originally published while the radio station was still operating.
Most of the AI Country Music catalogue is songs I wrote myself. But if you look closely at the song list, you'll spot two exceptions: Wildwood Flower and Poor Ellen Smith, both marked as public domain covers. Here's what that actually means, and why it matters.
Copyright doesn't last forever
Every song is protected by copyright the moment it's written — but that protection has an expiration date. Once enough time has passed, the work becomes "public domain," meaning nobody owns it anymore. Anyone can perform it, record it, adapt it, or broadcast it, without asking permission or paying a license.
Both Wildwood Flower and Poor Ellen Smith trace back to the 19th century — their original lyrics and melodies are well over a hundred years old, which puts them past any copyright term that exists anywhere in the world today. That's what makes them safe to include on a 24/7 radio station without a licensing agreement.
It's more complicated than "old = free"
Here's the part that surprises people: copyright rules aren't the same everywhere. In the United States, there's a simple, rolling rule — every January 1st, one more year's worth of works becomes public domain automatically, based purely on the year they were published. In the Netherlands and the rest of the EU, the rule is completely different: copyright lasts until 70 years after the creator's death, not a fixed calendar year. A song from 1928 might already be free to use in the US while still protected in the Netherlands for decades, depending on when its writer died.
There's another layer, too: sometimes it's not the original song that's protected, but a specific arrangement of it. A later musician can create a new, copyrightable arrangement of an old public domain melody — meaning the tune itself stays free, but that particular version of it doesn't. Anyone covering an old song has to be careful to work from the genuinely public domain original, not someone else's protected arrangement of it.
Why this matters for a station like this one
Running an internet radio station means taking copyright seriously, even at a small scale. Broadcasting a still-protected song — even briefly, even for free — requires the right licenses (in the Netherlands, that generally means BumaStemra for the composition and Sena for the recording). Public domain songs skip that requirement entirely, which is exactly why they're a safe, occasional addition to an otherwise all-original catalogue.
What makes a song public domain?
Copyright lasts a long time, but not forever. Once the term has run out, the work stops belonging to anyone and belongs to everybody — nobody's permission is needed to perform it, record it or build on it. That's the whole idea in one sentence. The awkward part is working out when the term ran out, because the answer depends on where you are, when the work was published, and sometimes on when its author died. A song that's clearly free in one country is not automatically free everywhere, and this is one of those areas where it's worth checking rather than assuming.
Public domain lyrics are not the same as public domain recordings
This trips up more people than anything else. A song and a recording of that song are two separate works with two separate sets of rights. The composition of a traditional ballad may be centuries old and entirely free, while a particular recording of it made in 1998 is very much not. Playing that recording is a different act, legally, from performing the song yourself. When something here is marked public domain, that refers to the underlying song — the recording of it was made for this project.
Can anyone record a public domain song?
In general terms, yes: that's what being in the public domain means. Nobody has to be asked, and no licence has to be bought for the composition itself. What you make when you record it is a new work of your own, and it carries its own rights. This is why a hundred different versions of the same traditional can exist side by side, each belonging to whoever made it, while the song underneath belongs to no one.
Why there are traditionals in this catalogue at all
Mostly because they're good, and because they're the ancestors of everything I write. Country music didn't appear out of nowhere; it came out of ballads that were passed around, altered and re-sung until nobody could say who wrote them. Recording a few of those alongside my own songs feels like acknowledging where the material comes from. They're marked as public domain in the song catalogue so it's never unclear which is which.