If I played “Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss II, you would probably recognize the song immediately. In fact, there are dozens of classical pieces that many of us are probably familiar with, even if we don’t listen to classical music regularly. Copyright for classical music can sometimes cause issues for YouTubers and other internet content creators. For example, a YouTuber might think that they are free to play a song because the composer has been dead for centuries. However, the recording they choose to play in their videos might be protected by copyright law and result in the video being taken down! Two content creators named Ludwig Ahgren and “JSchlatt” took it upon themselves to solve some of their copyright problems once and for all. To understand what they did and how they did it, we should talk about copyright law first.  Specifically, let’s look at the distinction between copyright protection over a musical composition versus a sound recording. Continue reading →