There’s been a huge trend in music recently with sampling. There’s also been a huge public outrage at artists that have “sample-heavy” music with many people claiming it to be plagiarism or an attempt to steal material. On the flip side, there are some in younger generations that don’t even know that the songs they are listening to have been sampled (Eg.Tubarão Te Amo is sampled from a 2001 song called Onda Onda). There are TikTok pages basically dedicated to revealing the samples in music everyone might have missed. While this may introduce young people to older music, what constitutes this as legal?
Let’s start at the beginning. A sample is when a preexisting sound is integrated into a new musical work. To do this, an artist must get permission from the owner of the sampled material. There are a lot of complicated hoops that someone has to jump through if they want to do this. They have to get approval from both the owner of the recording (most of the time it’s the record label, but if you’re Taylor Swift then the owner is Taylor Swift) and the owner of the underlying composition (the publisher). If they don’t go through these steps, it’s considered copyright infringement which usually creates a huge scandal in the music industry (E.g. Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines Lawsuit). There’s a common misconception that an artist can sample without permission if the sample is short enough. There is in fact no law stating this. The only exception is audio that is public domain. But what if someone is really inspired by a sound and wants to change it up a bit by playing it on a different instrument? Do they still have to get permission then? It’s different, so why should they have to give credit or whatever?
This is where interpolation comes into play. Interpolation is when a recording is recreated note for note and reflects the underlying composition. So, if I wanted to create a song and took some of the sounds from a BTS song and then copied and pasted them directly into my song, it would be sampling. But! If I heard the sounds from the same song and played them on a guitar instead of the instrument it was originally played on, that is interpolation. Do you still need permission though? Yes, of course! It’s still someone’s intellectual property! It’s a bit easier though, and you only need permission from the owner of the underlying composition (the publisher).
Ok, but shouldn’t artists be doing original work?
Humans have been creating music for a long time now. Yes, of course there are original songs being created every day, but with the rise of technology there’s a whole world right at your fingertips. Many people will find inspiration from across the globe. Art is meant to be enjoyed and if enjoying means inspiration, I feel like it was a job well done for the original creator. Part of being a musical artist comes with the knowledge that there will be people who are inspired by you (and of course a copycat or two). So, at the end of the day if you find yourself inspired to create, make sure to take the proper channels to get there!
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