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
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So you could just release someone else’s song with minimal edits and claim it as your own? Quite an utopia.
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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 
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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.
When bootlegs and mashups were really big, around 15 to 20 years ago, I was releasing some remixes on a vinyl bootleg label. We were sampling and remixing without permissions because they were small runs and bootlegs were everywhere and they all went under the radar until we sampled Candi staton and got a cease and desist threatening call from positivas lawyers after we got a radio 1 play. Seems they had just signed the original and were planning a remix release. All a bit scary but we stopped releasing any more and moved on to the next one.
From a DJ perspective I loved making bootlegs to play out as it put a new spin on classic tracks.
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An early reply in this thread mentioned Girl Talk. I think this documentary film is the base of that case:
That’s aesthetics, I guess, but I’d still argue it’s more than just a lazy rip & loop. I’d agree that sampling isn’t where RDJ shines, except when he’s cutting up breaks.
But ‘bad taste’ is an interesting angle to look at. I’m all for laissez faire sampling, but I’d certainly rather it was done in ‘good taste’. For me, again, attribution is an important factor in this. I don’t have any time for hiding sources and creating a mystique around a sample, and attribution removes that angle (more so nowadays, as you even don’t face a long hunt for a 7" once you know what you’re looking for).
Let everyone know what you’ve sampled, so they can find it and sample it themselves. In this way, anyone who’s serious about it is going to have to get creative to make their use stand out, so it encourages experimentation and innovation. If you find a new sample and just loop it, it’s probably going to be bettered - and also people will be able to see that it’s just a low-effort job (assuming it is - obviously you can mix straight loops to create interesting fusions).
I had a lot of my early illusions about electronic tracks shattered once I realised just how heavily some of them leaned on samples without really adding anything. There were a number of cases where a track wasn’t half as clever as I thought it was - but as I mentioned above, there have also been times when I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn something was a sample, because it has genuinely been used creatively.
But again, a lot of that is subjective and doesn’t ultimately matter; regardless of how I might feel about certain examples, I think encouraging risk-free and responsible sampling would have more positive than negative effects. I don’t think it’s very likely to happen in the real world, but I think it helps to have the concept out there, and to lead by example with options like CC licences.
It saddens me to see the potential of sampling hobbled, and that’s an even more pernicious element in this age of algorithms and automation. Of course we’ll always see fantastic illicit examples - that’s another argument in favour of removing obstacles, as it’ll always find a way through - but get rid of the chilling effect and I think we’d see so much more.
Again, not an endorsement of removing copyright altogether; some restrictions are necessary, and they can’t realistically be as wooly as ‘use good taste’. One concrete example might be limiting the percentage of a work you can sample. An issue we certainly have in the UK is the really unhelpful concept of fair dealing, which is impossible to pin down in any meaningful way, and always reduces down to ‘the courts will decide’ if you push it far enough. It’s nowhere near as empowering as it’s presented as being.
Sorry for the length there, but I did clearly threaten to go on and on.
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Why just not sampling your own music in a “creative way”?
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With all this gear available I think sampling from others is just lame and shows ones lack of creativity.
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That seems to assume we all can afford any and all the gear we want. What about hip-hop and crate digging? You’re gonna shit on an entire genre and/or group of musicians who probably live below poverty level but just want to create?
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That’s exactly what I’m doing yes.
Also it’s not assuming that at all.
I mean that if you need to use other ppls art to make yours you are not creative in my opinion.
Lol ok just checking. Thanks for your valued opinion master gatekeeper.
Anytime
this is a ballsy take. “art can be exactly one thing only, and only uncreative people can see its potential for transformation”
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Everything borrows from other things. I see no difference in grabbing a sound then manipulating it and taking a melody or rhythm and playing it.
It’s all just putting your spin on things and hip hop and the art of sampling is a beautiful beast just as p funk, freeform jazz, death metal, industrial noise and sugar coated pop all have their beauty.
Music is just awesome no matter the medium or journey it takes from production to your ears
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