I think this has never been disputed. There are also a couple of cover songs, which have been much better and much more successful than the originals.
IMO the problem is only that some producers think everything has to be free of permission or free of charge and they are allowed to make profits from the work of others as they like.
Well well
…a good day.
I’ve just watched this Youtube video posted by Schwefelgelb comparising one of their track to a Raw Ambassador one.
The result is impressive, almost shocking. No legal pursuit I guess so a bit of topic, but still, even inside sub electronic culture with smaller audience you can find this kind of plagia.
Hell yeah
It was disconcerting on one of the videos I watched that some people were like “Man fuck Keith and Mick!” as if those two guys had anything at all to do with the whole mess.
Good for them. If I had to hazard a guess, it’s that 90% of musicians really don’t care at all what some other artist does with their music whether they cover it, sample it, write a song “very inspired” by it, whatever–because as musicians (and all artists) we know that we don’t come up with ideas out of thin air. This shit doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. Keith and Mick of course know this themselves, as their whole reason for picking up instruments was thanks to all the black musicians from America.
But once you get the lawyers and the record labels involved…
[mod edit: talking about AFX’s “Xtal” on SAW that is based on a sample by Jeffries/Carewe/Greig’s “Evil at play”]
50% seems fair, i’m aware there was some publicity regarding RDJs relationship with R&S and the SAW1 deal, so i’m curious who get’s impacted and who was ultimately responsible. probs both to some extent.
First I’ve heard of this. Glad this got sorted out cause it definitely needed sorting.
Both gorgeous.
Interesting, I guess I perceive Xtal more as a remix now… I always thought that sample was just from one of those sample CD library mail order subscriptions people used to have before the internet.
It may very well be.
I remember Nate Harrison talking about companies selling the Amen Break…
I think (by my own entirely non-legislative standards) that Xtal’s sampling is transformative enough that all it really requires (again, morally rather than legally) is attribution and acknowledgement. It doesn’t simply add drums and FX over the existing track, even though the sample source is clear - for one thing, it evokes a completely different mood. Of course I appreciate the original artists may not share my view as a party without any financial or creative stake in the matter, but I don’t think it’s up there with something like The Verve vs The Stones (and even there I’d side with The Verve).
The source should 100% have been acknowledged as soon as the track was released commercially, though. That’s the only restriction I’d place on sampling if I was the boss, unless you’re just taking the piss. If you’re just taking the piss it can go to a grand jury.
That is the current restriction. If you acknowledge who you’re sampling / covering and give them credit and thus their share of profits (100% if it’s a cover), you can sample anyone you like.
Sure, I’m not out there giving legal assurances to anyone. In my manifesto, you’d be able to sample away for free as long as proper credit was given. But again, with the caveat of no taking the piss, which I acknowledge is a slippery concept and will be addressed in more detail if I ever have to actually produce a manifesto and back up my wooly libertine notions.
You are allowed to sample away for free right now. You just have to credit who you’ve sampled and they then receive their cut of the proceedings, which could be 100%
And in my forthcoming utopia they get NOTHING. I’m not sure the current utopia works in practice, as a couple of quick tests on YouTube would probably demonstrate. If you’re not willing to go toe-to-toe with the lawyers for Prince’s estate, you’ll just end up folding regardless of whether there are any proceedings to share.
There has to be some acknowledgement of context here I think. The period when this was sampled was still an early era for sampling and music rights. There are numerous rap songs that only a few years later would never had been possible as sampling rules became much more strict.
That being said, some of the comments on the video linked above, which involve fanboys arguing against the original songs producer’s points are laughable. But there’s that whole weird cultist afx fandom that exists now where he can do no wrong.
TBH, the use of the sample isn’t transformative in the slightest. While Xtal may have a different character overall, due to its added percussion etc, it contains a 1:1 replayed sample of the original recording. There are hundreds if not thousands of legal cases that have been settled with far less obvious cases of sampling
So you could just release someone else’s song with minimal edits and claim it as your own? Quite an utopia.
No, that’s the tricky “taking the piss” stuff that would require more than a forum post to sort out. But I would absolutely make attribution and transformation the cornerstones of the system. Satisfy those, and you’re in the clear. It involves some trust that this system will be used fairly - e.g. attribution is clearly given, so in this example the original library music artists are credited and gain exposure - but the current system, any any system, has the same constraint.
In practice it obviously gets murkier and more complex as you try to thrash out the finer details, but this would still be my starting point. Of course people can already invite this situation by using a Creative Commons licence for their work, but there you’re inevitably giving other people the right to redistribute the full original work, which is a bit beyond the right to sample.
The key here is, you need a way to differentiate sampling from plagiarism. Not easy, but still worth thinking about.
Edit: won’t take this any further here so as not to upset anyone, but happy to keep going on and on in a separate or new topic.
Done 
In fact this has apparently become an issue on the streaming/hosting sites lately. i know Sunshine Jones had to issue a take-down to someone who had uploaded a shitty ripoff version of one of his tracks and claimed it as their own original.
If you ask me (I know you didn’t 
), it’s got everything to be in the “bad taste sampling” category. It’s everything I want to avoid when sampling some music : beginning of the original song = beginning of the new song. Bad taste, bad work. Makes me think of all those rap bands sampling classical music, but who couldn’t stand listening more than the 10 first seconds of each track.
I’m a huge fan of Richard D. James, but if I had to mention his greatest weakness, it would be his bad sampling skills.