Music Sampling

Have you ever heard the song "Land Down Under?" My bet is you have. Now how about "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree?" Again I would guess you have. Now compare the two. Land down under is a pop song that has a cool beat and a sweet flute section in the middle. Kookaburra is folk song for children. I think that most people would find these songs to be completely different. However, the people that matter feel like they are too much the same. Recently a case was made saying that the amazing flute part I mentioned in the beginning was stolen from Kookaburra. When I found this out, I was shocked because I couldn't believe songs that are so different could have any similarities. I also don't know why it took years before this was discovered. If there were more than twenty years between when it was made and when it was found why are the makers of the song being sued for millions of dollars? This hit will now be a flop because of a mistake that just recently became a huge problem.

Music sampling is the practice of taking a part of one song and putting it in another song as a background track with some alteration. This idea began with rappers in the eighties and has continued until today. For a long time this has been a respected practice of the music world but it has since become a problem. Record labels who hold the rights to the songs being used are suing those who sampled saying that it is copyright infringement. This has stood in some cases and seems as though it is becoming the status quo. There are some defenses however.

A song can be sampled in another song if that song has not been used in the same way it was orignally used or if it is significantly altered from it's original sound. This is where things get sketchy. What is significantly altered? What was the original use and is it different? The problem is that these questions could be answered either way and often have been in court cases. But if there is a time when sampling is legal then why is there not a clear line of when it is not? There is no specific amount of measures, words, or notes that say you have illegally sampled music.

You can also get permission to sample music or break copyright laws. People arrange pieces of music everyday. Te difference is that they ask permission to alter the music and/or they give the original author credit for their work. This changes things from illegal to accept in society even though they are almost the same practice.

So there are other questions that eventually come like when is music legally in the public domain and legal to sample. That doesn't happen until a minimum of ninety after the death of the copyright owner. So maybe the next question should be if that is too long for people to make money off of a song. In my mind that is way too long. You should never need to hold a copy more than about your life. When you die your music should go into the public domain so that people can appreciate and honor your death without have to pay for it.

So basically I believe that music sampling is a new style and a new way to show songs. Therefore, it should be legal to take parts of songs and use them in your music as long as they don't hurt the original song or use massive sections of a song.