6 Surprisingly Famous Royalty Free Songs https://blog.audiosocket.com/music-licensing-copyright/6-surprisingly-famous-royalty-free-songs/
"....That’s why many creators turn to famous copyright free songs. These tracks offer the perfect balance of familiarity and freedom—allowing you to elevate your content without the risk of takedowns. While it can be tough to find well-known tunes that are both free and legal to use, there are some surprisingly popular options out there. .."
The six featured in the article are: Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Happy Birthday, House of the Rising Sun, Rockin’ Robin, Everybody Loves My Baby, and That’s All Right. Another not mentioned there but of note is as of January 2026 the song "I Got Rhythm" entered the public domain too, but there are plenty others to be found. With AI making new renditions of these old songs can sound quite impressive and the familiarity of the lyrics makes it more engaging to listen to.
One excellent resource for finding them is the Library of Congress Citizen DJ which categories public domain songs by category (Blues, Jazz, Folk etc) I think Artisan mentioned them recently https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/public-domain-2022/ Associated to that is The National Jukebox https://www.loc.gov/collections/national-jukebox/
Like I said I've done about 30 recreations of public domain songs that I really consider worthy of airplay, for example, today I pulled up the original lyrics of the 1924 "I'm Alone," by Irving Berlin, a song I wasn't familiar with, but you can hear a 1920s record of the song in the video below, but here's what I did with it - tell me this ain't a good one!:
Ai is definitely an intriguing option for royalty-free broadcast content
Here's what the song sounded like when it was a hit:
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Here's some of my others, Rockin Robin, Puttin on the Ritz, Body and Soul, House of the Rising Sun, Georgia on my Mind, Dream a Little Dream of Me, Sunny Side of the Street, Home on the Range, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (which is surprisinly sweet, Take Me Out to the Ball Game (the full lyrics which I never knew till now), Are You Half The Man You Used To Be, These are all free to air. I got more
I screwed that up, I've posted some duplicates left some out and also posted 3 different versions of Rockin Robin, only meant to post 1 (though I like all 3), - Anyway I was editing the post and correcting everything but by it took so long to figure what was what and the time to edit ran out! Ahhhh!
I notice the one on the top ended up being Home on the Range, which is unfortunate because it starts out with a hokey version, which is likely to cause someone to skip it and go on to the next - but that's not it! It cuts right after the first verse and begins again into a really cool rendition.
I had been experimenting with incorporating a DJ into the same files
I screwed that up, I've posted some duplicates left some out and also posted 3 different versions of Rockin Robin, only meant to post 1 (though I like all 3), - Anyway I was editing the post and correcting everything but by it took so long to figure what was what and the time to edit ran out! Ahhhh!
I notice the one on the top ended up being Home on the Range, which is unfortunate because it starts out with a hokey version, which is likely to cause someone to skip it and go on to the next - but that's not it! It cuts right after the first verse and begins again into a really cool rendition.
I had been experimenting with incorporating a DJ into the same files, (optionally)