sampling copyright

[vercitti]

I can't imagine that those thousands sampled music used in another tracks is done with a copyright request because it's happen too much nowdays everywhere every genre 
so I might be missing something ???

[AnX]

if in doubt, get permission, simple as that

would you be happy for someone to sample your song/movie/whatever without permission?

[BertKoor]

Sorry, but I easily can imagine. And the procedure is called "clearing".

In my perception it occurs just a fraction nowadays compared to, say, 25 years ago.

[Nightshade03]

There are literally entire company departments, and actual entire companies in the music business who's sole job is to clear samples. So yeah, one can totally imagine that that's the case.

[JeffLearman]

In most countries, if you record something in any fixed medium (e.g., staff notation, audio or video recording on ANY media), you automatically get a copyright. So, yes, EVERYTHING is copyrighted these days. To find something not covered by copyright, you have to go back to the early 1900's (I don't remember the cutoff, but say 1920 or 1930?)

In the US, copyrights last until 70 years after the death of the author, by default. Many copyrights, the author of record is a corporation, and different rules apply. Also, copyrights can be extended by filing paperwork, but big corps with lots of intellectual property (e.g., Disney) don't want to do all that paperwork, so they keep lobbying to keep Mickey under copyright protection. I wager that in 20 years, they'll lobby (and get) to have it extended to 90 years. Frankly, it would be better for a company to just file once and say "All our property." That way, stuff that nobody cares about could go back into public domain. But currently, almost nothing goes to public domain.

In the US, while you get a copyright by default, you can still register the copyright with the US Patent Office, along with sending a copy to the Library of Congress. Why bother? Because if you do, any subsequent violations can get more damages: you can get "statutory damages" in addition to "actual damages". Actual damages are what you lost or the other party gained. Statutory damages include attorneys' fees and punitive "treble damages". Also, in the US, you cannot file a copyright suit until you have registered the copyright. One more advantage: a filed copyright is assumed valid, so the burden of proof is on whoever claims that it is not. Most evidence in court has to be attested to by a witness and entered into the record via testimony, and is not assumed valid. A very few things are allowed into the record and assumed valid, like property titles. It's a big benefit. So, if you're going to steal copyrighted music, copyright it yourself first! (Just kidding! I bet that doesn't really work, and it's fraud, which is criminal.)

Meanwhile, you're right: lots of music is published with lots of samples, much of it uncleared. In the early days that was more rampant, but lawsuits curbed the behavior. When you do it, you're taking a legal risk. Note that it's not criminal: the US Marshals won't show up and you won't be hauled off to jail. But you can be sued in civil court by the copyright holder.

If you're low on the radar and doing it say as an amateur or a hopeful, your risk of a lawsuit is negligible, and frankly you needn't worry about anything other than being blocked on Youtube. However, if your recording ends up being an internet sensation, you're out of luck. That is, if you win, you lose!

[vercitti]

In most countries, if you record something in any fixed medium (e.g., staff notation, audio or video recording on ANY media), you automatically get a copyright. So, yes, EVERYTHING is copyrighted these days. To find something not covered by copyright, you have to go back to the early 1900's (I don't remember the cutoff, but say 1920 or 1930?)

In the US, copyrights last until 70 years after the death of the author, by default. Many copyrights, the author of record is a corporation, and different rules apply. Also, copyrights can be extended by filing paperwork, but big corps with lots of intellectual property (e.g., Disney) don't want to do all that paperwork, so they keep lobbying to keep Mickey under copyright protection. I wager that in 20 years, they'll lobby (and get) to have it extended to 90 years. Frankly, it would be better for a company to just file once and say "All our property." That way, stuff that nobody cares about could go back into public domain. But currently, almost nothing goes to public domain.

In the US, while you get a copyright by default, you can still register the copyright with the US Patent Office, along with sending a copy to the Library of Congress. Why bother? Because if you do, any subsequent violations can get more damages: you can get "statutory damages" in addition to "actual damages". Actual damages are what you lost or the other party gained. Statutory damages include attorneys' fees and punitive "treble damages". Also, in the US, you cannot file a copyright suit until you have registered the copyright. One more advantage: a filed copyright is assumed valid, so the burden of proof is on whoever claims that it is not. Most evidence in court has to be attested to by a witness and entered into the record via testimony, and is not assumed valid. A very few things are allowed into the record and assumed valid, like property titles. It's a big benefit. So, if you're going to steal copyrighted music, copyright it yourself first! (Just kidding! I bet that doesn't really work, and it's fraud, which is criminal.)

Meanwhile, you're right: lots of music is published with lots of samples, much of it uncleared. In the early days that was more rampant, but lawsuits curbed the behavior. When you do it, you're taking a legal risk. Note that it's not criminal: the US Marshals won't show up and you won't be hauled off to jail. But you can be sued in civil court by the copyright holder.

If you're low on the radar and doing it say as an amateur or a hopeful, your risk of a lawsuit is negligible, and frankly you needn't worry about anything other than being blocked on Youtube. However, if your recording ends up being an internet sensation, you're out of luck. That is, if you win, you lose!

that was so useful , I'm not in USA I'm not sure how it work in my country but I'm curious about smth you said anything is copyrighted , if I published a track online and someone downloaded the wav file and claim it's his track and not mine , what happen !?

[risome]

You register your works with your copyright group in you country you live in and can easily have prove then you are the creator of original bodies of works.

[risome]

PS thats how we get royalties btw

[JeffLearman]

I'm not in USA I'm not sure how it work in my country but I'm curious about smth you said anything is copyrighted , if I published a track online and someone downloaded the wav file and claim it's his track and not mine , what happen !?

As mentioned above, if you file a copyright first, you generally get the better odds. But the sad part is, if someone infringes your copyright, you have to sue to get it fixed. (Well, first you send a "cease and desist" letter, and if they accept that, you're good -- not likely for anyone who intentionally cheats, though.) So, if you don't have funds to hire a lawyer (and who does?) you pretty much don't have much recourse.

As mentioned above, the best thing for you to do is register a copyright however you can in your country, or you can do it in the US especially if you plan to distribute using US-based companies (Youtube for example.) With Youtube, the copyright holder of record has ALL the power (too much in fact, it's a sad thing but you luck out in this case. Admittedly it's a hard thing for a site like Youtube to get right.) So with YT, if you hold the copyright and someone else posts your stuff and you find it, you just (a) prove to them you hold the copyright and (b) either block or require monetization of their post.

You can find out how to file a copyright in the US at http://www.copyright.gov . You don't have to be a US citizen. You can file as many items as you can fit on a single CD, as long as the authorship is the same for all the items. You'll want to register both "PA" (performing arts, which covers the idea) and "SR" (soundrecording, which covers that particular recording.) That gives you the most coverage and doesn't cost more. IIRC it's $35 per filing (at least, it was in 2004, might have gone up.) That site is where I learned a lot of the facts, plus my father is a retired patent attorney and we've discussed this stuff a lot. There's LOT to learn at that site, most of it in plain English, not lawyer-ese or laws/codes.

There are sites that offer copyright registration and perhaps make it easier. Might be worth checking out, but my guess is it's easy enough to do by yourself. As an attorney, when my father would have clients needing to file copyrights, he'd walk them through it the first time so that they could do it themselves afterward -- and that was decades ago, when there was no internet. (He's 94 now.)

To get royalties, you sign up with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) like BMI or ASCAP. I don't know much about this end, never having done it. However, my understanding is that you won't get much from them as an independent, not until you get serious radio play or whatever they use these days. The way PROs work is, they measure the amount of play an artist gets in the media (mostly radio, used to be, but maybe more sources now.) They collect dues from bars and places that play music commercially. They divvy up the dues based on the measurements they took. So, someone like Lady Gaga gets a big chunk of money from a small bar with an open mic night where they're playing old favorites you never hear on the radio any more. Ah well. Nothing against Lady Gaga; that's just how the system works.

[GRUMP]

There's too much irrelevant "Music" today. CR usually only gets relevant if a Track is somehow succesful and lasts longer than a Week.?

[vercitti]

I'm not in USA I'm not sure how it work in my country but I'm curious about smth you said anything is copyrighted , if I published a track online and someone downloaded the wav file and claim it's his track and not mine , what happen !?

As mentioned above, if you file a copyright first, you generally get the better odds. But the sad part is, if someone infringes your copyright, you have to sue to get it fixed. (Well, first you send a "cease and desist" letter, and if they accept that, you're good -- not likely for anyone who intentionally cheats, though.) So, if you don't have funds to hire a lawyer (and who does?) you pretty much don't have much recourse.

As mentioned above, the best thing for you to do is register a copyright however you can in your country, or you can do it in the US especially if you plan to distribute using US-based companies (Youtube for example.) With Youtube, the copyright holder of record has ALL the power (too much in fact, it's a sad thing but you luck out in this case. Admittedly it's a hard thing for a site like Youtube to get right.) So with YT, if you hold the copyright and someone else posts your stuff and you find it, you just (a) prove to them you hold the copyright and (b) either block or require monetization of their post.

You can find out how to file a copyright in the US at http://www.copyright.gov . You don't have to be a US citizen. You can file as many items as you can fit on a single CD, as long as the authorship is the same for all the items. You'll want to register both "PA" (performing arts, which covers the idea) and "SR" (soundrecording, which covers that particular recording.) That gives you the most coverage and doesn't cost more. IIRC it's $35 per filing (at least, it was in 2004, might have gone up.) That site is where I learned a lot of the facts, plus my father is a retired patent attorney and we've discussed this stuff a lot. There's LOT to learn at that site, most of it in plain English, not lawyer-ese or laws/codes.

There are sites that offer copyright registration and perhaps make it easier. Might be worth checking out, but my guess is it's easy enough to do by yourself. As an attorney, when my father would have clients needing to file copyrights, he'd walk them through it the first time so that they could do it themselves afterward -- and that was decades ago, when there was no internet. (He's 94 now.)

To get royalties, you sign up with a Performing Rights Organization (PRO) like BMI or ASCAP. I don't know much about this end, never having done it. However, my understanding is that you won't get much from them as an independent, not until you get serious radio play or whatever they use these days. The way PROs work is, they measure the amount of play an artist gets in the media (mostly radio, used to be, but maybe more sources now.) They collect dues from bars and places that play music commercially. They divvy up the dues based on the measurements they took. So, someone like Lady Gaga gets a big chunk of money from a small bar with an open mic night where they're playing old favorites you never hear on the radio any more. Ah well. Nothing against Lady Gaga; that's just how the system works.

thanks man
you explained alot to me !

[arkmabat]

For selling samples, it depends on your country and what is being sampled, first of all. Here in the US, anything acoustic or electronically produced in real time without samples (e.g. the 808, but only the drums not the cymbals from the 909) are fine to sample and share if you're the one operating them. I believe in Germany, it's fine to sample a larger variety of sounds, even copyrighted, as long as it's under a certain time length. The original FL Studio stock drums were just ripped from an old sample disc if I remember right, but since it was made in Germany, there wasn't any law against this.

Technically, even using a legally purchased drum synth with copyrighted samples in a song you produce could be illegal if you released it under the Creative Commons license, making it legal to sample copyrighted drums. At some point you just have to go after what you want and not worry too much. I don't know if Australia has very lenient copyright laws or too little of exposure, but DJ S3RL remixes copyrighted music all the time and simply releases the most at-risk songs as free downloads wedged inside mp3 mixtapes. The Ninja Turtles theme song can be found for sale and on streaming services, while a Cascada remix and Transformers remix remain wedged inside mixtapes and hidden in huge bundles for sale directly from his site only. It seems he cautiously gauges how "at-risk" a song's sample use is and releases it accordingly.

[Tricky-Loops]

I believe in Germany, it's fine to sample a larger variety of sounds, even copyrighted, as long as it's under a certain time length.

This might have been the case in the 80ies and very early 90ies but nowadays Germany isn't a sampling paradise at all...

https://www.factmag.com/2019/07/30/kraf ... l-verdict/

Whilst I have much respect for Kraftwerk as electronic music pioneers, 20 years (!!) of lawsuit only because of a 2-second sample for me is overreacting. Most hip hop music in the 80ies and 90ies was created with illegal samples from disco and funk songs of the 70ies. Not only 2 seconds, even minutes of them. It kills creativity, and most artists aren't that wealthy that they could buy a license for every kind of sample. Of course someone like Dr. Dre can do it (after many lawsuits) because he can afford a lawyer just for licensing samples but most artists don't have so much money.

And then, if you hear the same samples of bought sample libraries over and over again in the whole world, it becomes boring. I rather admire The KLF and how they sampled all kind of stuff but it's simply not more - legally - possible nowadays.

[AnX]

Just don't be a c**t about it, credit where credit it due

[BertKoor]

On the southern hemisphere there's no copyright, but only the right to copy