“How Copyright Law Makes Sample-Based Music Impossibly Expensive… If You Want To Do It Legally”

by Walter Olson on May 9, 2011

Kembrew McLeod: “it [licensing] gets way more complicated when you start sampling songs that contain samples, which is increasingly the case today.” [Atlantic Wire via TechDirt]

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{ 6 comments }

1 DensityDuck 05.09.11 at 3:38 pm

This seems less like a problem grounded in copyright law, and more like a problem grounded in the music industry’s insistence on breaking the entire process down into the tiniest chunks possible and then putting a price tag on every chunk.

Just the idea that, to “license” a song, you need to negotiate with two completely independent entities…no wonder everyone steals everything. Doing it “right” is damn near impossible.

That said: Maybe if these guys could write their own damn riffs then we wouldn’t have this problem.

2 Nicolas Martin 05.09.11 at 8:18 pm

God, this means that musicians might have to resort to thoroughly original compositions! That could mean the end of a generation of total crap. The sweet irony is that the same companies that promoted the crap are now strangling it.

3 mike 05.10.11 at 2:36 pm

I suppose ‘total crap’ is in the ear of the beholder. If a song containing a sample is far more popular than an original composition (each given equal opportunity for success) which one is crap?

At least the sampler gives credit (and royalties) to the artists they sample – as opposed to the countless ‘real musicians’ who blatantly steal riffs and change a note, a key or simply tempo and call it their own.

4 David Eggers 05.10.11 at 2:42 pm

Just what we need, more music copied off of other music.

5 Sam T 05.23.11 at 10:19 am

So should we get rid of the laws that protect an individual or company’s property when they copyright a song? It seems we have to make a choice: either protect an individual’s right to a song he/she creates with copyright laws or allow consumers to take that person’s property without compensating them.

6 Shtetl G 05.23.11 at 12:10 pm

Non sampled original songs are not as “original” as we might think:

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