14. “Happy Birthday to You”

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Economics of Everyday Things

Episode 14: “Happy Birthday to You”

Host: Zachary Crockett (Freakonomics Network)
Release Date: February 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the surprising and fascinating story behind the world’s most familiar song: “Happy Birthday to You.” Journalist Zachary Crockett delves into the origins, ownership controversies, and legal battles over the song’s copyright. The podcast features documentary filmmaker Jennifer Nelson and intellectual property law professor Robert Brauneis, following the journey of how “Happy Birthday to You” transformed from a simple children’s song to a lucrative property—and, thanks to a landmark lawsuit, finally entered the public domain.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Happy Birthday” Song’s Strange Ban in Media (01:04-02:18)

• Jennifer Nelson (documentary producer) recalls a peculiar instruction during her time at MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16”:

  "You can't film anybody singing the Happy Birthday song… This is a show about birthdays and we can't sing the happy birthday song?"
  (Jennifer Nelson, 01:30)

• This common-sense-defying restriction led Nelson to learn that the song was privately owned and using it on air required thousands of dollars in licensing fees.
• Nelson’s emotional response:

  “I just thought it was nuts. I was pissed too. Like, doesn't that song belong to everybody?"
  (Jennifer Nelson, 02:18)

2. Origin Story: From “Good Morning to All” to “Happy Birthday” (02:24-04:48)

• The melody was composed in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1893 by sisters Patti and Mildred Hill. Originally, it was the upbeat “Good Morning to All” for kindergarten classes.
• Robert Brauneis (Intellectual Property Law Professor) explains:

  "The sisters were very conscious of copyright, so no question, 'Good Morning to All'... was under copyright from 1893 till 1949."
  (Robert Brauneis, 04:02)

• During the 1890s, the lyrics "Happy Birthday to You" were substituted into the melody; by the 1930s, the song became embedded in American birthday celebrations.

3. Copyright Complications and the Rise of Royalty Fees (04:48-08:14)

• In 1935, publisher Clayton F. Summy registered new copyright claims on “Happy Birthday to You,” supposedly granting the Hill sisters partial ownership—though possibly only over certain arrangements, not the melody or lyrics themselves.
• The ability to charge for usage went largely unchallenged, quickly turning the song into an unlikely goldmine, especially with its integration into singing telegrams, movies, and TV:

  “Pretty soon… they realized they could start charging for use of the song and nobody would challenge them. And that just became a little goldmine.”
  (Robert Brauneis, 05:39)

• Annual licensing income exceeded $75,000 by the 1970s and hit $2 million per year for Warner by the late 1990s.

4. Avoiding Copyright: Pop Culture Workarounds (07:52-08:14)

• To sidestep royalty payments, restaurants like Chuck E. Cheese composed their own birthday songs.
  • Example:

    "Restaurants like Chuck E. Cheese… came up with alternative birthday songs to avoid the necessity for paying royalties for happy birthday.”
    (Zachary Crockett, 07:52)

5. Challenging Goliath: Jennifer Nelson Takes on Warner (10:35-13:36)

• After being forced to license the song for her own documentary, Nelson discovered Brauneis’s legal paper suggesting the copyright could be defeated.

  “He wrote this long article saying if anybody challenged this copyright claim, they would surely win. He felt like their claim… was weak.”
  (Jennifer Nelson, 11:08)

• Randall Newman, Nelson’s lawyer, about the case’s premise:

  “The Hill sisters wrote the melody… the question was, who wrote the lyrics?”
  (Randall Newman, 11:47)

• The 2013 class action lawsuit aimed to invalidate Warner’s copyright claims and repay those who had paid licensing fees.
  • Nelson’s sense of purpose:

    “I really felt like we were battling for everybody, every film, every TV show, every birthday party at Applebee’s."
    (Jennifer Nelson, 12:49)

6. Victory and Public Domain Liberation (13:01-14:10)

• In 2015, a judge ruled the copyright claim invalid; the iconic song entered the public domain.
  • Warner was ordered to distribute $14 million in refunds to past licensees.

    “One of them got like, close to a million dollars. ... No, these guys were getting hundreds of thousands from these companies.”
    (Randall Newman, 13:27)

• Newman and team received over $4 million in legal fees; Jennifer Nelson got her $1,500 license fee refunded (“Yeah, I got a check." – Jennifer Nelson, 14:13).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jennifer Nelson, on challenging Warner:

  “It was like, okay, I'm about to punch a gorilla in the face. They're going to blackball me or smash my kneecaps or something.”
  (Jennifer Nelson, 11:30)

• Robert Brauneis, on copyright confusion:

  “At the time, I think all they really thought that they were doing was copyrighting the arrangements, which they could.”
  (Robert Brauneis, 05:00)

• Randall Newman, on legal outcomes:

  “The Hill sisters wrote the melody... the question was, who wrote the lyrics?”
  (Randall Newman, 11:47)

• Jennifer Nelson, after victory:

  “Did you get your $1,500 back?”
  “I did.”
  (Zachary Crockett & Jennifer Nelson, 14:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:04] – Jennifer Nelson’s origin story and the “Happy Birthday” filming ban
• [02:24] – Origins of "Happy Birthday": The Hill sisters and “Good Morning to All”
• [05:27] – How the copyright loophole became a lucrative business
• [07:52] – Restaurants create workarounds to avoid royalties
• [10:35] – Jennifer Nelson’s lawsuit and the legal challenge
• [13:01] – Judge rules, song enters public domain, and refunds begin

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Tone & Style

The episode features a lively, inquisitive tone, blending legal intrigue, historical narrative, and personal storytelling. The host, Zachary Crockett, guides listeners through humor, skepticism, and the ultimate triumph of everyday people against corporate absurdities.

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Conclusion

This compelling episode reveals the unlikely legal and economic story behind “Happy Birthday to You,” demonstrating how ordinary people can challenge corporate control over cultural mainstays. Thanks to Jennifer Nelson and her team, this ubiquitous song is now truly free for everyone to sing—on TV, in restaurants, and at your own birthday party.

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For more on Jennifer Nelson’s film “Saving Happy Birthday,” visit the Freakonomics website.

Transcript

[A]

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Qualifying credit required. About a decade ago, Jennifer Nelson was working in the trenches of reality television.

[C]

I was a producer at mtv and I was working on a popular show called my super sweet 16. And it was about lavish, over the top birthdays for wealthy kids. And they would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these birthday parties and arrive in helicopters or, you know, have elephants on display.

[B]

Early on, she got a confusing mandate from her boss.

[C]

My producer was like, you can't film anybody singing the Happy birthday song. Just don't do that. And I was like, what do you mean? This is a show about birthdays and we can't sing the happy birthday song? Everybody on the crew always thought it was so dumb, but nobody really looked into it.

[B]

So Nelson decided to look into it herself. And. And she found out something that blew her mind. The song. A song that you and I have sung hundreds, if not thousands of times. A song that forms a critical part of an American ritual. It was the property of one of the world's largest music publishers. To use it, her show would have to pay thousands of dollars in licensing fees.

[C]

I just thought it was nuts. I was pissed too. Like, doesn't that song belong to everybody?

[B]

The more Nelson looked into the history of the world's most familiar song, the more she realized that the story she'd been told about its ownership was questionable. For the Freakonomics radio network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, Happy birthday to you The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. That's ASCAP for short. Well, they once called it far and away the most popular song of the 20th century. But before the world knew Happy Birthday, the tune Was just an obscure little ditty. It came from the American heartland. 130 years ago in Louisville, Kentucky, two sisters named Patti and Mildred Hill wrote songs for children, Songs that were simple, repetitive, and easy to sing. Patti was a kindergarten teacher, and one of these songs in particular caught on with her students. It was called Good Morning to All. Patti and Mildred filed for a copyright on the sheet music in 1893 and printed it through a publisher named Clayton F. Sumy.

[D]

The sisters were very conscious of copyright, so no question, good morning to all with that combination of the tune we know as Happy Birthday to you and the words Good morning to all. That song was under copyright from 1893 till 1949.

[B]

That's Robert Bronis. He's a professor of intellectual property law at the George Washington University Law school. And in 2010, he published an article titled Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song. It also covered some interesting history.

[D]

Sometime during the 1890s, good morning to all started being sung with the words Happy birthday to you.

[B]

At the time, children's birthday parties were a relatively new phenomenon. Happy Birthday to you became the song for the occasion.

[D]

By the 1930s, basically everyone in the United States knew that melody and associated it with the Happy Birthday to youo words.

[B]

In 1935, the Clayton F. Sumi Company printed multiple versions of Happy Birthday to youo, and it registered its own copyright claims on the song, giving partial ownership to the Hill sisters.

[D]

This is sheet music, and so this is not just the melody and the words. This is usually a piano accompaniment with chords and bass lines and the like. And at the time, I think all they really thought that they were doing was copyrighting the arrangements, which they could.

[B]

But if somebody creates a new arrangement of a very old song, that arrangement could be considered a new work that's placed under copyright, even if the original melody is in the public domain.

[D]

Pretty soon, I think they realized that they could start charging for use of the song and nobody would challenge them. And that just became a little goldmine Anytime anybody sang the song, for whatever reason. And these were in contexts that we would find odd today, but were popular then. For example, Western Union had a singing telegram service. And as you can imagine, Happy Birthday to you was a very popular singing telegram. And there were estimates that in the first five years it had been sung as a telegram a million and a half times.

[A]

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday.

[B]

The song appeared in dozens of movies and cartoons like Mickey's birthday party in 1942, which you're hearing right now. By the 1970s, it was bringing in more than $75,000 a year in licensing fees. Summey's assets changed hands a few times over the years, and in 1988, its parent company was sold to Warner Communications for $25 million. As a part of the deal, Warner acquired the rights to 50,000 songs. But the real jewel of the catalog was Happy Birthday to you.

[D]

Many people were singing it in public, and many people were incorporating it into movies and television shows and the like, and they were all paying a lot of money for that privilege.

[B]

Warner aggressively enforced the song's copyright for.

[D]

Very large budget movies. The way that fee is negotiated is that you request permission to use Happy Birthday to youo in your movie, and the owner of copyright sends you a sheet and says, well, what's the budget for the entire movie? You tell it, oh, it's $500 million. And then they say, oh, well, $50,000 is not a very large fee in comparison to your full budget, so let's charge you $50,000.

[B]

And anyone who wanted to sing the Happy Birthday song in public for profit was liable to pay anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand bucks.

[D]

And of course, restaurant chains came up with alternative birthday songs to avoid the necessity for paying royalties for happy birth.

[B]

Restaurants like Chuck E. Cheese, you're a.

[A]

Birthday star at Chuck E. Cheese, you're a special guest. You please say happy. You say birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday.

[B]

But if a big corporation like Chuck E. Cheese was gonna give up on using the original song that everyone knows, how could a single documentary filmmaker make a difference? That's coming up.

[E]

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[C]

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[A]

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[B]

By the late 1990s, Happy Birthday to youo was making Warner an estimated $2 million per year in royalties. Some of that came from Jennifer Nelson, the filmmaker. After learning about the copyright, she decided to make a short film called Saving Happy Birthday. And of course, she needed to feature the song.

[C]

I bought my own license for $1,500 to be able to use it.

[B]

In the course of her documentary research, Nelson came across that article by Robert Braunheis.

[C]

He wrote this long article saying if anybody challenged this copyright claim, they would surely win. He felt like their claim to the copyright was weak.

[B]

And yet nobody had ever challenged Werner's copyright, which was thought to extend to the year 2030. So Nelson did something crazy.

[C]

It was like, okay, I'm about to punch a gorilla in the face. They're going to blackball me or smash my kneecaps or something.

[B]

Nelson decided to sue Werner over the copyright on Happy Birthday to youo. A guy named Randall Newman became one of the lawyers on her team.

[A]

As soon as I researched it, I knew it was gonna be huge. The Hill sisters wrote the melody, you know, good morning to all. The question was, who wrote the lyrics?

[B]

Werner claimed that the sisters had also written the lyrics to Happy Birthday to youo, and thus the copyright the sisters had sold applied to the entire song. Jennifer Nelson and her lawyers disagreed.

[A]

We claim that no one knows who really wrote them. They claim that the copyrights covered the lyrics and the melody. We say they're just copyrights on the actual sheet music. On an arrangement.

[C]

We scoured over 100 years of history. We did some archival research out in Kentucky, where the Hill Sisters are from, and went through their letters and paperwork and stuff.

[B]

In 2013, the group filed a class action lawsuit against Warner on behalf of people who had paid to license the song under the questionable copyright.

[C]

I really felt like we were battling for everybody, every film, every TV show, every birthday party at Applebee's.

[B]

In 2015, a federal judge ruled that Werner's copyright claim on Happy Birthday to youo was invalid, and the song was effectively liberated into the public domain. The following year, the court ordered Werner to distribute a total of $14 million to anyone who had paid to use Happy Birthday to you since 1949. For some of those claimants, that was a very big payday.

[A]

One of them got like, close to a million dollars. You know, people think, oh, class action. You're going to get 32 cents. No, these guys were getting hundreds of thousands from these companies.

[B]

Newman didn't do too shabbily either. His legal team was awarded more than $4 million in fees. After the case, Newman liberated a few other popular songs that he believed had been wrongly copyrighted. He successfully challenged a copyright claim by the Richmond organization on the gospel song We shall overcome. And in 2018, it went into the public domain. And Jennifer Nelson, well, she got a little something too. Did you get your $1,500 back?

[C]

I did.

[B]

What'd they do, send you a check in the mail?

[C]

Yeah, I got a check.

[B]

For the Economics of Everyday Things, I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by Sarah Lilly with help from Lyric Bowditch and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. You can see Jennifer Nelson's movie Saving Happy Birthday on our website. Happy birthday, dear Jennifer Nelson Happy birthday to you. Nice.

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