#63

Totally agree, it makes me want to stop publishing my music and do it just for myself…but that is so difficult in this era where sharing and getting quick feedback from strangers is so easy. With everyone making music today I am probably copying melodies and artworks without even knowing that!

#65

A sample clearance agreement would generally result in co-ownership of the new work, so you’d be co-owner of the new work with the original copyright holder. If the original copyright holder sells its interest to a third party that new party is the successor-in-interest. That sale wouldn’t terminate your co-ownership agreement. You’d just have a new co-owner.

Even if all you got was a mechanical license as permission to use the sample, that license would still survive a sale.

Real world example: Sony/ATV bought most of EMI’s publishing copyrights a while back. All of EMI’s existing agreements didn’t disappear with the sale. Sony/ATV just became the new EMI, effectively. Music catalogs get bought and sold all of the time, and it would be a nightmare if all of the old agreements needed to be renegotiated each time.

There are rare exceptions to all of this, but overall the EMI/Sony/ATV example is how things work in the music business.

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#66

Not sure where this fits into the conversation but several people I follow on YouTube for production tutorials have had copyright strikes on that platform. Not because they sampled anyone but actually from people who stole their work. (ie. someone sampled/stole the beat that they were creating during the tutorial).

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#67

I catch myself doing this frequently. Sometimes long after I’ve published. I try to make changes to things when I discover I’ve goofed in this way.

But that’s really more around artwork. Melodies? I dunno. There’s only 12 notes in a 12TET tuning. Only certain progressions in Western Common Practice sound consonant to us. We’re gonna repeat ourselves! It’s inevitable! But that doesn’t stop people from being ridiculous:

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#68

All the agreements I have are for speeches and they are via email. I suppose that cannot be considered ownership?

#69

Email won’t make a difference but seems like you have licenses to use the speeches.

#70

Checking that out just for the name!! Also P2P devices… Definitely Napster and Limewire lmao. Those were the days

#71

You mean an email is enough?

#72

Right, an email can be enough for an agreement. You just want to make sure you’ve covered the major terms for what you’re agreeing to. A lot of boilerplate is CYA and ways for resolving disagreements and breach. Lawyers (I’m not one) would probably have more to say on that. There are a lot of free templates for music licenses online if you want to dot your i’s.

#73

FWIW, most of the vinyl releases I’ve done have had at least a few fairly shameless copyright violations lurking somewhere within; no problem. Meanwhile, the two times I’ve been ‘caught’ it’s been at the manufacturing stage, for a 50 run cassette.

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#74

Let’s talk about Ableton Live now.
Here is what they say you can do with their samples and loops: https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209768885-Commercial-Use-rights-for-Live-content

To me that means that yes, they are royalty free, but only if you alter them significantly.

Now I have to go back and take them all off or mangle them, when a few of my song where centered around the idea of the samples used

#75

I’d argue that using their presets, samples or loops in a new composition IS transforming them.

Their real concern is that folks not repackage them for resale as a commercial library.

No doubt lots of licensed users are utilizing this content more or less as delivered with the program, particularly presets and samples. Who is going to muck up the included drum hits, for example, just to comply with the license?

I can see some sense to not reusing the demo tracks, which are compositions themselves.

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#76

I agree with you, but the wording isn’t right to me. Most of the people would not care, but some like me will OCD on this. I am at a point where I want to create my own samples anyway, but I made quite a few album with the Ableton samples in the past myself

#77

I agree that it’s ambiguous, but I prefer to think about what is the actual likelihood that they would come after someone for violating it, as well as trying to find the common-sense meaning of what they actually care about.

I’m a copyright lawyer by day, so while this is in no way meant as legal advice, I think you can probably not worry too much about it.

There’s also a difference, I suspect, between using a sample in an instrument that they sell as part of the software, such as a sampled grand piano, which you would need to create your own composition to use in any meaningful way, as opposed to one of their clips with compositional elements to it. That might cross a line somewhere… I’d try to steer away from using the more compositional materials, at least as much from the desire to make my own original music as to comply with the license terms!

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#78

It was mentioned earlier in passing by @AudioObscura but I think it’s worth linking John Oswald’s Plunderphonics because it really lays out the creative dimensions of the conversation while highlighting how silly copyright laws are in light of modern music practices.

Plunderphonics Essay

And the video Michael Jackson and co. Threatened a suit over:John Oswald Dab

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#79

Have to add “Jolene both ways” too because I really love that piece
Jolene both ways

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#80

It’s probably old news already, but just in case

Also makes me kind of wonder, if we lived in the 50s, what happens if you take a copyrighted melody (with the sheet registered etc) and you transpose each note by a few cents so they’re all slightly off?
Do the copyright owners own the intervals/chord progressions or just the “general idea about how the melody sounds”?

#81

transposition doesn’t result in any new copyrightable material, at least not in the US.

#82

Pre lockdown warm up set fav of mine:

mindless boogie!!

1 Like
#83

Here’s a very apropos and thoughtful Twitter thread by @Ethan_Hein this morning (I hope this is okay).

I like the analogy with research paper citations. It sounds like what we need is a new law that says using samples is like covering a song with a fixed and known and reasonable cost.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): I assign my music tech students to write a short blog post on whether or not they think unlicensed sampling is morally acceptable. Many of them compare sampling without permission to plagiarism. It’s a common line of thinking. And it’s wrong.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): First of all, this is nothing against my students. Many of them are coming from the classical pipeline and have never thought seriously about sample-based music before, and it’s natural for them to reach for more familiar conceptual vocabulary.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): And it is certainly possible for an unlicensed sample to be logically equivalent to plagiarism, if the producer is trying to pass off a sample as something they created “from scratch.”

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): But I’m asking my students to think in terms of, like, Run-DMC or De La Soul or Pete Rock, where the samples are conspicuous and overt, are meant to be heard as intertextual references, not being passed off as something “original.”

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Like, when you listen to “Eye Know,” you’re supposed to recognize the keyboard riff from “Peg” and the whistling from “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.” It’s a category error to equate that kind of intentional intertextual reference with plagiarism.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): The thing that’s interesting about sampling as practiced in the 80s and early 90s rap is that it’s the transformation of recognizable existing source material into new music. To reduce that creative act to “plagiarism” misses what a huge conceptual leap it represents.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Sampling is new, it only became a widespread pop music practice within my lifetime, so it makes sense that our conceptual vocabulary is taking a while to catch up. We can help that process along by clearly distinguishing between transformative usage of existing audio and theft.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Students tend to argue that, okay, sampling is a valuable creative act, but it would be better if people always credited their sample sources and shared revenue with them. I agree with that. The problem is that copyright law as it stands is a disincentive to citation.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Because sampling is so expensive and the clearance process is so cumbersome, there’s no benefit to doing it “the right way” when you can avoid it.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Cover songs are different. The compulsory license scheme and Congressionally-imposed fee structure means that getting permission to record a cover is cheap and effortless. It makes more sense to credit your covers than not to.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Students also compare sampling to citing sources in academic writing. Makes sense, they’ve done more academic writing than sampling. Here, too, the norms and rules create different incentives.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Imagine if you were writing an academic article, and before you quoted any author, you needed their permission in advance, and the permission of their publisher, and both parties could demand any fee they saw fit. No one would ever cite a quote if they could avoid it.

Ethan Hein (@ethanhein): Anyway, plagiarism bad, sampling good, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

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