Get a license or do not sample
Thursday September 9, 2004 – 2:21 amWired News: Facing the Copyright Rap
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work — even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music.
That goes a helluva lot further beyond just rap music! Whew, glad I’m "just" a singer-songwriter. Bad enough I’m writing songs in 3/4 and 4/4, and using the chords A, C and E so much; clearly there is prior art on all that.
September 9th, 2004 at 6:38 am
that’s a clinically insane ruling. there’s an entire jazz tradition – hell, it’s prolly constitutive of jazz itself – of the musical quotations (something that likely extends across *all* music). i think, though, there’s enough legal precedent of "fair use" to prevent things from getting *too* unreasonable (as.in crippling the artistic community, something that would never happen anyway, as – unfortunately – most artists operate under the radar [i.e., most don't make enough money to attract the attention of Corporate Lawyers]). in only *slightly* related news, i remember a cover Red House Painters did of "silly love songs." it’s credited, naturally, to Paul McCartney, but the only thing Mr Kozelek retained was the words: the MUSIC is "Cortez the Killer" by Neil Young (uncredited). hilarious.
September 9th, 2004 at 7:34 am
If this keeps up, we’ll all have to go the Harry Partch route: invent our own instruments and make up our own chords and song structures.
Still to be figured out: how do you recognize an unrecognizable sample?
September 9th, 2004 at 8:09 am
Oh god, now I got Silly Love Songs stuck in my head.
September 9th, 2004 at 10:12 am
I guess the work of Charles Ives is going to be banned now too….