• What are your views on sampling other people's music?
    3 replies, posted
Do you think it's bad practice? Good? Only good if you properly credit the author? I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter. Personally I've always did original compositions when producing music, but I think that producers that focus on sampling other people's music are as much of an artist as I am. I've always avoided sampling music because I feel there's a negative stigma behind it, but at the same time, I know people that do it and I have friends who are pushing me to do it so there's some kind of internal conflict going on here. I've tried sampling a song once, and I didn't really like the result, so I've just defaulted to original compositions since then. I give props to anyone who is able to sample a song and make it work.
Sampling a song is a way to show off how eclectic your taste in music is as well as how creative you can be with making the sample your own. It's a challenge to others to seek out the original. Websites like whosampled.com are dedicated to the process of finding the origin of samples. The Avalanches, who make music entirely from samples, have a cult following dedicated to cataloging the thousands of songs that they've drawn from. You don't credit the artist for two reasons: to make it harder for your listeners to find the source, and to avoid getting sued immediately. If you credit the artist, you show up in google searches for that artist. You're at the mercy of whatever conglomerate the artist sold their rights to. If you try to get permission, the rights holder (unless it's the artist) is going to want compensation. And if you refuse, well now they know what to look for for a tasty lawsuit. It's better to just sample it without permission and ask for forgiveness later, if your song even gains any notoriety.
Never credit for the reasons Ott said, but if anybody ever noticed I sampled them I'd give them 100% revenue from that song. I'm nobody so there's no reason to credit or share pocket change revenue at this level. If one of my songs ever blew up, I'd take the clout for myself and pass the money on to the sampled artist because I'd rather just give it all up instead of trying to math out how much of the songs success is due to my work and how much is due to the popularity of the sample. If I blow up off one song and can't make another hit, well then it sounds like that sample was doing most of the heavy lifting and I didn't deserve that money in the first place. If I blow up off one song and CAN make another hit, I'm thankful for buzz and I'm not worried about how much I could've made off that one song.
It does seem to have a negative stigma, but at the same time, I don't think people really realize how much modern music makes use of sampling. Or how creative you can be with it in making it your own. It's kinda like the negative perception on "auto-tune". It can be used heavily for style reasons or so subtly that only an audio engineer would notice.
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