General sampling questions (legality...etc-- not "how to")

[jordanh]

Hey everyone,
I've always wondered about this, and since I really want to start sampling or quoting older material, I figured I would ask here and see if anyone could spread a little knowledge. Up until now, all of my tracks (with the exception of one) haven't used samples from other songs and I haven't replayed any melodies or themes from other material. Being a multi-instrumentalist (guitarist, piano, drums, percussion, sitar...etc), I have always written all of my own parts to my music, whether it be hip hop or folk. I do have one song where I chopped up and sampled an old song from the 70's, and listening to a lot of Dre and other stuff, I am really interested in doing more sample based work, as sampling is one of the definitive aspects of hip hop since its inception.

My question is simple. What is legal? I've heard songs where things are clearly just cut n' pasted, sometimes pitch and speed are tweaked, sometimes it sounds like melodies and arrangements were copied/sampled but completely re-played or recorded.

Do only certain kinds of things need clearance, credit, and/or money to be legitimately sold?

I'm sure I left a lot out, so any and all information you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure I'm not alone here either, so if anyone else has any questions about the legality and process of sampling and selling beats (on the non-technical side) feel free to chime in.

Jordan

[azwun25]

ANY sample of a previously recorded work technically has to be cleared.

[Ken Lewis]

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE, only an opinion, suggestion, take it for what its worth.

If your an artist, and you have a song with a sample, and you dont think you'll sell more than a few hundred or at best a few thousand copies, and your not going to be all over the radio, then you might not want to bother trying to clear your sample.

........

if your a producer shopping beats, dont bother clearing your sample before shopping. If a label buys your beat, let them worry about sample clearance, but be concious of the deal you sign with them, as they could hold the clearance costs against your fee's and leave you with nothing or worse.

Keep one thing in mind, law suits are EXPENSIVE. even getting a lawyer to draft a letter is going to cost someone several hundred dollars or more. So if you only sold 1,000 copies, the amount of money they would need to spend to come after you would be 100 times more than what they could possibly hope to collect in a law suit.

HOWEVER.... If you think you might have the underground hit of the year waiting to be discovered, and you leak the song with an uncleared sample, your in a much worse position to negotiate clearances of that sample if the song is catching fire already.

Big artists have really gotten themselves stuck hard by leaking their singles to radio before samples are cleared. Cam'ron "Boy", Fabolous "Breathe", Kanye "Diamonds" all come to mind.

OH, one more word of note. Most CD duplicators wont duplicate a disc they know has uncleared material on it. I'm not telling you to lie to them and tell them there isnt any uncleared material, i repeat, thats NOT what i'm telling you to do

tread carefully and look at the realities of where you think the song will go in the marketplace. you dont think they clear samples for mixtapes do you?

[superjc]

Remember what happened to Lord Tariq & Peter Gunnz? How bout Rob Base & DJ EZ ROCK? Sued out of existence.