Where to Find Free, Public Domain Swing Music

Free. swing. Music. Are there three words sweeter than this? 

Of course there are lots of ways to find swing music nowadays: Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, Bandcamp, brick-and–mortar music stores (remember those?), even your public library… But here’s a source you may have never heard of to get free, 100% legal swing music: the Public Domain.

What is the Public Domain?

To understand the Public Domain, you have to understand a little about copyright law. (I am speaking about US Copyright Law, since that is where I am based. Your country’s laws may differ. And no, IANAL.) 

Copyright is a form of protection provided by US law for "original works of authorship," covering everything from a haiku to a feature length film. When something is copyrighted, it means that the person who created it is the only person with the legal right to do whatever they want with it -- reproduce it, change it, sell it, etc. 

One important provision of copyright law is that it does not apply indefinitely. “Normally” copyright law for any work applies for 70 years plus the lifetime of the original creator. After that point, it enters into the Public Domain. 

Public Domain simply means that the work is completely free of copyright law. Anyone is welcome to use, copy, share, and perform that music with no strings attached. 

Music is one type of media that has been an exception to the 70-year rule, with recordings even as old as the early 1900s still being controlled and sold by large music companies. That changed in 2018 with the passage of the Music Modernization Act. Under this new law, hundreds of thousands of pre-1923 music on January 1st, 2022 entered into the Public Domain.  Woo hoo! 

Where Do I Find Public Domain Music?

Unfortunately, you can’t just Google “free swing music” and get to these songs. Many of them are still hard to find, undigitized or not yet online. A great place to start is the Internet Archive. They house and share literally millions of works of media, from photos to entire books , feature films, and music. All for free.

The music archive is vast, with over 700K works available.  This collection includes about 17K recordings of older jazz music, including such greats as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Django Rheinhart. A less daunting collection is this listing of 1920, 1921 & 1922 foxtrot recordings that contains 925 swingin tunes.

There are lots of hidden gems from the early days of swing jazz just waiting to be discovered. Here are a few that caught our fancy:

“Society Blues” by Kid Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra (1922)

“The New York Glide”, by Ethel Waters, 1921

“Walkin’ the Streets (Until My Baby Comes Home)” by Wingy Mannone and his Orchestra (1921)

Bee’s Knees by The Original Memphis Five (1922)

Swingin’ for a Swiss Miss” by Willie Lewis and His Orchestra (1920)

A redditor on /swingdancing suggested this source for Public Domain jazz music as well: jazz-on-line.com .

Have fun exploring the world of Public Domain works! And let us know what you discover.

Note: We would be remiss if we didn’t remind you that there are lots of hard working swing musicians today who could use your financial support. Check Bandcamp for some awesome ones. Hey Mister Jesse has a fantastic compilation that is a good place to start, with 100% of proceeds donated to the Black Lindy Hoppers Fund.