Copyright and sampling go hand in hand when it comes to using music legally. Given that we live in an era in which innovative and provocative tunes are literally at the touch of our fingers, any creator must be especially careful when it comes to the production of their own songs. In this day and age we must celebrate the technological and creative advancements that make inspiration possible. For this reason, in this entry we’ll explain what sampling is and how it relates to copyright.
Sampling
In music production, sampling is separating a part of an existing sound and incorporating it into a new work. In general terms, it’s a way of honoring and taking advantage of previous melodic pieces to reinterpret them. For instance, you can isolate a guitar riff, or a piano line, from a recording (as opposed to re-recording it or producing something new from the start). In short, sampling means taking elements such as rhythm, melody, sounds (or entire bars of music), and even speech. The point is integrating these in your own music. It’s common to listen to drum tracks that someone else composed and to use them for your own benefit. In doing so, you may layer, equalize, speed them up or down either with the aid of samplers (a form of hardware) or DAWs.
A Concrete Example
Hip hop, as a genre, uses sampling as a foundation. Everything began back in the 1980s, when artists began integrating funk and soul records, drum breaks in particular, into their own tunes. Sampling is also common in electronic and pop music. Examples of this kind of songs are Avicci’s “Levels,” which contains a sample of Etta James’s “Something’s Got a Hold of Me.” In this same regard, it’s fun to know that Led Zeppelin has a wide popularity amongst artists who are looking for samples. Another fun fact is that the recorded sounds you can use while sampling don’t have to come from music: they can come from video games, famous speeches, and even quotidian urban sounds. An example of the latter is Billie Eilish, who uses audio from a pedestrian crosswalk signal in her song “Bad Guy.”
Sampling and Copyright: the Copyright Portion
As mentioned in our entry on copyright, whenever you use a sound that another person (or company) owns you should be respectful and pay your dues. If you sample, make sure that you don’t infringe copyrights by learning who has its legal ownership. A summary on how to avoid this is to acquire the legal permission from the holder, which in turn might imply looking into your country’s fair use laws. Even if today some artists might be more flexible with their ownership of their productions, this doesn’t mean that you can appropriate a melodic piece that’s not yours without thinking about the risks it may imply.
An example of what you shouldn’t do is embodied in artist Kanye West. Creators have sued many times for sampling without consideration. At this time, this musician has the economic power to deal with all the attorney fees this conveys: but this is not the case for many emerging artists who are just embarking in their journeys through music marketing.
Sampling and Copyright: Conclusions
If we look into it with a positive lens, one of the good things about sampling is that it can make the source material (the “original” isolated sound) a more popular one. A way in which you can avoid getting in any legal mess is to recreate a recording instead of sampling as such. Regardless, you must do this too with permission: the artists (or the copyright holder) should grant you the freedom to do so. It’s everyone’s right to innovate: just make sure you’re doing so respectfully and legally.
