Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of elchicodelaleche

February 8th, 2009 – I was listening to Justice’s “Cross” last night, and I was reminded of an article I read on MusicRadar. In it, Justice is quoted as saying, “we don’t clear all our samples”. Apparently there were only three samples that were cleared on the whole album. That got me thinking : if someone sampled from my material, at what point would I feel that they needed to “clear” it with me?

Sampling is the foundation of hip hop, and now is a regular occurence in electronica and everything in between. 30 years ago, sampling something like James Brown for your mix tape, wasn’t a big deal. Sure if you were Vanilla Ice, and you sampled a full Queen bassline, then you definitely had the lawyers breathing down you necks. But if you were making your breakbeats, and you sampled some obscure jazz pieces, no one bothered you.

Today, music is so easy to come by, that a personal remix might spread all over the world quickly. Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” was supposedly only a remix for friends, but quickly became a huge worldwide hit. That was when I believe sampling really came across the radar of the media, and consequently the general public.

About that time, Creative Commons licensing among independent artists exploded. Even though Creative Commons were officially instituted in 2001, artists who did not want to be lumped with the copyright laws that the RIAA was so heavily invested in, joined the CC licensing trend with increasing numbers starting about the time of the “Grey Album”.

Now I’m not here to judge what rights an artist does or does not want to provide when distributing music. Art is deeply personal, so it is up to the creator to decide what can be done with it. It is my opinion that if Metallica doesn’t want people downloading their music for free; that’s their prerogative. As a listener, you can either honour their wishes, or you can get sued; that’s your prerogative. As short-sighted as it may be for Metallica to take that stance, you have to allow them to make their own choice.

Now onto Justice. The interesting question raised by this all is: when does a sample need to be cleared by the original copyright owner? Legally it’s defined, but what about ethically? If someone takes a kick drum from one of my songs, and modifies it for their needs, I wouldn’t mind. If someone takes a whole loop from my music that I can identify, then I might have a problem with it. But I’m not even sure myself what that line is. If someone samples my voice without permission, I might have a problem with that. Where is that line drawn? Should we only consider these issues if the song is released commercially? What are your thoughts?