Under the Copyright Term Extension Act, books and other works published in 1929 and films released in 1929 entered the public domain in 2025.[5] Sound recordings that were published in 1924 also entered the public domain.[6] The characters Captain Easy,[7]Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, and Popeye the Sailor Man entered the public domain in 2025.[8] The same happens for the first Tarzan stripsillustrated by Hal Foster that were launched in 1929.[7]

Notable musical works entering the public domain include George Gershwin's composition An American in Paris and the first recordings of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Among the popular songs that entered the public domain in 2025 are the following:

• "Ain't Misbehavin'"
• "Can't We Be Friends?"
• "Honeysuckle Rose"
• "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan"
• "Just You, Just Me"
• "Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)"
• "More Than You Know"
• "Singin' in the Rain"
• "Stardust" (1929 version with words by Mitchell Parish)
• "What Is This Thing Called Love?"
• "With a Song in My Heart"
• "Without a Song"

Unpublished works whose authors died in 1954 entered the public domain in 2025.

Among the films that entered public domain in 2025 are the following:

• The Cocoanuts, the first film of the Marx Brothers
• The Broadway Melody, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first musical film and the second recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture, making it the first sound film to win the award.
• The Hollywood Revue
• Say It with Songs, the first all-talking film starring Al Jolson
• Spite Marriage, Buster Keaton's final full-length feature as a director
• Welcome Danger, Harold Lloyd's first sound film
• On with the Show!, the first sound film in color
• Hallelujah, one of the first films with an all-African American cast produced by a major studio
• The Cock-Eyed World, sequel to What Price Glory? (1926)
• Show Boat, containing some songs from the 1927 musical
• Blackmail, Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film and the first British sound film
• The Black Watch, John Ford's first sound film
• Dynamite, Cecil B. DeMille's first sound film
• Eternal Love, John Barrymore's last silent film
• The Virginian, Gary Cooper's and Victor Fleming's first sound film
• Where East Is East, last collaboration between Lon Chaney and Todd Browning
• Atlantic, the first sound film about the Titanic disaster
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes, the first sound film to star the character of Sherlock Holmes
• Behind That Curtain, the first sound film to star the character Charlie Chan
• The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, the first sound film to star the character of Fu Manchu
• Bulldog Drummond, the first sound film to star the character Bulldog Drummond
• The Three Masks (Les trois masques), the first French sound film
• Land Without Women (Das Land ohne Frauen), the first German sound film
• Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond), directed by Fritz Lang
• Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) and Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen), both directed by G. W. Pabst and starring Louise Brooks
• The White Hell of Pitz Palu (Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü), directed by Arnold Fanck and G. W. Pabst and starring Leni Riefenstahl
• Drifters, a documentary film about Britain's North Sea herring fishery
• Un Chien Andalou, directed by Luis Buñuel and cowritten by Salvador Dalí
• The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice (Les mystères du Château du Dé), directed by Man Ray
• Rain, a Dutch documentary short directed by Joris Ivens
• Sound versions of the Mickey Mouse cartoons The Gallopin' Gaucho and Plane Crazy, the 1929 cartoons including The Karnival Kid (in which Mickey speaks his first words); and the first Silly Symphony cartoons, including The Skeleton Dance.

Examples of important literary works entering the public domain include Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, William Seabrook's novel The Magic Island (the first book to introduce the concept of a zombie). Ellery Queen's detective novel The Roman Hat Mystery, Margery Allingham's detective novel The Crime at Black Dudley, the first English translation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz in its original German, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel Pather Panchali in its original Bengali, Lynd Ward's wordless novel Gods' Man, William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel Tarzan and the Lost Empire, Ruth Plumly Thompson's novel Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, Bertrand Russell's book Marriage and Morals, Patrick Hamilton's play Rope, A. A. Milne's play Toad of Toad Hall, Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own, Ludwig Wittgenstein's essay Some Remarks on Logical Form and the first part of the 14th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (full in public domain by 2029).

Important artworks entering the public domain include Salvador Dalí's paintings The Great Masturbator and The Accommodations of Desire, Wassily Kandinsky's painting Upward, Edward Hopper's painting Chop Suey, Kawamura Kiyoo's painting Founding of the Nation, Julio Romero de Torres' painting La Fuensanta, M. C. Escher's print Strada di Scanno, the first design of the Barcelona chairand August Sander's photograph Berlin Coal Carrier and other photographs from his 1929 photobook Face of our Time. The public domain status of René Magritte's painting The Treachery of Images is contentious.