Austin Nagel
Professor Richards
English
15 October 2017

COPYRIGHT LAW REGARDING MUSIC SAMPLING.
To: Producers and artists of Tone Def Records.
From: Austin Nagel
Date: 15 October 2017
Introduction
Music sampling has been an integral part of the music industry since time immemorial. In the past, music sampling was freely allowed, but when songs containing sampled music turned out to be very popular, owners of the sampled music saw the need to copyright their music. With this, anyone who wanted to test any genre of music for commercial purposes has to seek permission from the copyright owner. Sampling music without the knowledge and go ahead of the owner of the copyright is an infringement of the copyright, the sound recording copyright, and …show more content…
The owners of the copyright are the record company and the songwriter or publishing company. The record company owns the sound recording copyright while the songwriter or publisher owns the copyright in the song. If one wants to sample legally, they have to acquire permission from the copyright holder, both the record label and publishing company. The process of getting permission to test music is known as sample clearance. To get the clearance, a clearance fee is paid that varies from one copyright owner to the other and on the length of the sample to be used. The clearance fee mostly ranges from $1,000 to$2,000 but can be as high as $10,000 on a major label. Sampling is allowed if the sampled music eis used within one's residents, in live shows or if the music is released to the public, listeners would not be able to notice ant similarities between the final product and the sampled portion or if the fair use doctrine applies to the sampled …show more content…
Fair use is considered if the accused did not take a large sample, if the sample was transformed making it almost unrecognizable or if the example did not harm the owner of the copyright in a financially significant way.
Some artists believe that using four notes or less, or less than two-second sample is considered fair use. This is very misleading since there is no set number of time or words below which is deemed to be legal. Infringement is tested on the substantial similarity between the sample and the final work.
Recommendations on how to sample legally.
• Pay clearance fees.
This is paid to the owner of the copyright, after getting permission to use the song itself and the recording. A secure written agreement is formulated as proof.
• Imitation
This involves using inspiration from a particular source your music but without any similarity between the final work and the source.
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