All Musical Samples Must Be Paid For

Michael Chocholak

Ok. We've hashed this one before. And everybody joked about staking out their portion of the musical scale; 'Eflat is mine' type of thing. (personally I'll claim good ole C so even professional tuners & grade school music teachers will have to pay me). But this is ridiculous. Court Rules That All Musical Samples Must Be Paid For. Including notes and beats. Single miniscule events. The court sums it up with; "Get a license or do not sample," the court said Tuesday. "We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way." (Sorry, that's a direct quote so I hope it doesn't cause any trouble).

Part of me riles at this thinking, ok, then with this kind of thinking we wouldn't have had much of the most intriguing work from Stockhausen, Cage, Holger Czukay, Bill Nelson etc, etc let alone today's rappers & loopers. Are they going to pull all that music?

What the hell are they thinking? Do they have any concept of what they've potentially unleashed here? Are they going to have note detectives combing every release in every format to make sure no one sampled something even half a second long? How can you prove it was lifted after you've manipulated it? Since they have released music by rappers that sample, are they going to sue themselves? What's an "artist"? If I use a field recording, monks chanting, commentary from a shock jock or talking head, does that count? Think of the sound samples used in tracks that have run through here. What's "piracy"? If I sample but give my track away for free am I a 'pirate' or would that be Robin Hood? Does it only apply to "digital sampling"?

So we've got a bunch of human fossils that apparently don't have a clue about this slice of culture, and don't even apparently bother to define their terms, tossing off a descision that is all encompassing, probably unprovable, that has the snake eating it's own tail after gobbling everything else up.

Cretins. Evil or Very Mad

mosc · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:52 pm Post subject:

Shit, you got C. I'll take G...

paul e. · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:33 pm Post subject:

well, the lawyers will have a field day with 12 bar blues in e major Shocked

paul e. · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:37 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 11:47 pm Post subject:

I read the article. This did not seem that bad at all... it kinda makes sense really. Is this really a problem?

paul e. · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 11:58 pm Post subject:

well, i like to sample a snare hit from an old record and then take that single snare hit and programme a new rythmn with it..i could describe why this is worthwhile from an artistic standpoint, but does it constitute copyright infringement Question

if it is infringement, i better see a lawyer. Confused

paul e. · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 12:09 am Post subject:

another example might be the snippets of radio play text samples you use in certain elektro 80 tracks...unless of course the copyright has run out on these recordings...in that case, no problem Very Happy

Michael Chocholak · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 12:41 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:34 am Post subject:

Well.. I am pretty sure my samples are cool. The radio stuff is public domain in the US. The same stuff has been SOLD for years by the tape shops and some of the tape shops have been in battles over the copyrights. the conclusion is that this stuff is public domain.
The other stuff is either from some old sound efx CDs/ vinyl with the rights cleared or I have made the stuff myself. I have relied on french, brit and US legal cases when I have used the titles of books as song titles. If the authour is still alive I send an email and ask for permission. I ask eeven though the book title is a quote from another source etc etc.

You can in fact use quotes in music.. and as long as I call this art and not pop I am entitled to quote whatever.

Anyway... this specific case seems to target those nasty hiphop/rap dudes.. spawns of the antichrist.. etc etc etc etc...

elektro80 · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:56 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 2:05 am Post subject:

OK... some snare hits are just any snare hits.. who cares.. but then are better than others. If this had been a guitar solo by Jimmy Page most of us would have seen the point but for some reason drummers aren´t that musical or unique? There are some obvious problems here.

Dovdimus Prime · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 4:03 am Post subject:

I tend not to worry about this sort of stuff because presumably the burden of proof is on the record label to demonstrate that the sample you're using is taken from a particular track of theirs... rather them than me!

I've always assumed that the situation is even harder in classical music when not only would you have to spot the sample as being from a particular piece, but also from a particular recording of a particular piece! That's one of the reasons I like sampling classical music in my hip hop tunes, you can happily declare the composer and piece but not specify the recording.... Very Happy

trash · Joined: Aug 27, 2004 Posts: 69 Location: Brighton YAY!

its snot stealing if you don't get caught innit....

xxx

mosc · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 8:15 am Post subject:

paul e. · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 9:05 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 9:10 am Post subject:

Even though the ruling itself is a bit funkadelic.. literally, the article puts the whole thing in context.

paul e. · Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2004 9:15 am Post subject:

re. sample cd's... i have heard sample cd's where the famous drum break from The Winston Brothers 'amen, brother' has been chopped up and re-ordered to create a simliar but different beat..

so, what about these....

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:10 am Post subject:

There is a lot of the low end stuff that that is pretty dubious. A friend of mine bought a 28 euro sample CD in a Music store some weeks ago.
It was called something like "The Ultimate MAXIMUM Catatonic Analog Synth Collection" or something similar.( MAAAN, those products names... uhhh )

What this turned out to be was pretty much a collection of samplings of presets from many of the Roland JV cards and a lot from some Yamaha and a Korg. They had just recorded the direct output from factory patches...
Shocked

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:17 am Post subject:

My buddy is a Roland nut... he probably even has ROLAND tatooed on his nuts. He also has a fair collection of polka boards from vendors like Yamha and Korg. He managed to recognize and find the first 31 sample sets on his hardware synths. The names of the samples were of course pretty inventive. They had splattered ARP, MOOG, OBERHEIM etc etc etc all over... but nothing of this was authentic of course.

Oskar · Joined: Jul 29, 2004 Posts: 1751 Location: Norway

Oskar · Joined: Jul 29, 2004 Posts: 1751 Location: Norway

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 11:38 am Post subject:

I think he meant "snort"... The police is stealing snort from people all the time. Stealing snort is probably legal.

Shocked

seraph · Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:01 pm Post subject:

Oskar · Joined: Jul 29, 2004 Posts: 1751 Location: Norway

trash · Joined: Aug 27, 2004 Posts: 69 Location: Brighton YAY!

seriously though
there should be some kind of licence board
with me at the helm of course
and any artist that employs *non-creative' use of samples*
should be struck off
and perhaps executed too..!

it would stop the problem of ppl like elton john

xxx