The song “Happy Birthday” is actually owned a subsidiary of the media conglomerate AOL Time Warner, with its ill-fitting lyrics and mind-numbingly simple tune. How a popular song like this ended up in the hands of a multi-national media conglomerate is almost as fascinating as the song’s origins.
Mildred J. Hill, a woman from Kentucky, is thought to have written the song’s tune sometime around 1893. Patty Smith Hill, her sister, had already written a simple greeting song for her students called “Good Morning to You.” Mildred and Patty Hill were both important figures in early childhood education, and their greeting song was eventually included in a collection of kindergarten songs. However, there were no lyrics at the time that actually contained the words “Happy Birthday.”
“Happy Birthday” was included as a second verse of the Hill sisters’ “Good Morning to You” in several songbooks the mid-1920s. Several motion pictures used the song without crediting the songwriters, prompting Jessica Hill, a third sister, to seek legal redress. Jessica Hill also established her sisters as legal owners of the work’s copyright.
This is where “Happy Birthday’s” ownership rights become a movable feast. Jessica Hill collaborated with Clayton F. Summy’s musical publishing company to release the song as a copyrighted work in 1935, citing Preston Ware Orem, a Summy employee, as the lyricist. Originally, the Hill sisters’ copyright would have been valid for two consecutive 28-year terms. Modern changes to copyright law, on the other hand, have added several more decades of protection, ensuring that the work remains privately owned until at least 2030.
Jessica Hill and the Clayton F. Summy Company are the first owners of “Happy Birthday.” The company was purchased a New York businessman and renamed Birch Tree Ltd. In the late 1990s, Warner Chappell, a Warner Communications subsidiary, purchased Birch Tree Ltd. and renamed it Summy-Birchard Music. To form Time Warner AOL, Time Warner merged with Internet behemoth AOL.
Individuals can still sing it in the privacy of their own homes, despite the fact that commercial productions must pay royalties or obtain a license from ASCAP or the Harry Fox agency. Employees in bars and restaurants without ASCAP licenses are technically prohibited from performing “Happy Birthday” for customers, so many of these establishments write their own birthday songs as a substitute.