New Birthday Song To Make You Even More Depressed To Get Older

A new copyright-free birthday song. You get what you pay for.

Ever notice that movies and TV shows go out of their way never to sing “Happy Birthday To You” on-screen? Well that’s because Warner Music Group owns the copyright and rides that cash cow to the tune (hah!) of $2 million every year. Every unauthorized rendition of the song is technically worth $700 in royalties payable to Warner Music Group.

Warner Music Group’s zealous enforcement has even raised concerns that YouTube may have to take down videos of kiddie parties singing the song.

How can we break Warner Music Group’s stranglehold over our annual celebration of our own impending mortality? A New Jersey radio station (WFMU) decided to write a new song to replace “Happy Birthday To You” and brought in Harvard professor Larry Lessig to judge the competition.

A video of the new song that you’ll come to love appears after the jump. And by love I mean, “listen to, laugh, and hope to purge from your memory”….

That song is what I’d imagine depressives sing to themselves alone on their 55th birthday before they stick a shotgun in their mouths and pull the trigger with their toes. It sounds like Radiohead made a birthday dirge and left out their trademark happy-go-lucky pep.

Larry Lessig picked this? He may need a hug, you guys.

Sponsored

The task of creating a new birthday song is a fool’s errand. The original is firmly implanted in the brain of English-speaking children coming out of the womb. A more effective use of our collective efforts would be mounting a legal challenge to dislodge Warner Music Group from its copyright claim.

Professor Robert Brauneis of GW Law wrote a detailed study of the song and its copyright status and concluded that the song almost assuredly lost its copyright a long time ago. Brauneis noted that a “silver bullet” has yet to be found, but that a great deal of evidence exists against Warner Music Group’s claim to continue bilking the entertainment industry until 2030 — the year Warner Music Group claims the song will finally pass into the public domain.

Until then, I’m going to hit play on this clip again and sit in my basement looking at old pictures of dead pets while eating pizza directly from the box.

Sponsored