Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling

Out of stock at the UK distributor

You may order it now but please be aware that it may be six weeks or more before it can be despatched

Other available formats

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. The Golden Age of Sampling 19
2. A Legal and Cultural History of Sound Collage 36
3. The Competing Interests in Sample Licensing 75
4. Sampling Lawsuits: Hip-Hop Goes to Court 128
5. The Sample Clearance System: How It Works (and How It Breaks Down) 148
6. Consequences for Creativity: An Assessment of the Sample Clearance System 187
7. Proposals for Reform 217
Conclusion 258
Appendix 1: Interviewee List 269
Appendix 2: Interview Questions 273
Notes 283
Bibliography 303
Index 313

About
Reviews
Explore

About

How did the Depression-era folk-song collector Alan Lomax end up with a songwriting credit on Jay-Z’s song “Takeover”? Why doesn’t Clyde Stubblefield, the primary drummer on James Brown recordings from the late 1960s such as “Funky Drummer” and “Cold Sweat,” get paid for other musicians’ frequent use of the beats he performed on those songs? The music industry’s approach to digital sampling—the act of incorporating snippets of existing recordings into new ones—holds the answers. Exploring the complexities and contradictions in how samples are licensed, Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola interviewed more than 100 musicians, managers, lawyers, industry professionals, journalists, and scholars. Based on those interviews, Creative License puts digital sampling into historical, cultural, and legal context. It describes hip-hop during its sample-heavy golden age in the 1980s and early 1990s, the lawsuits that shaped U.S. copyright law on sampling, and the labyrinthine licensing process that musicians must now navigate. The authors argue that the current system for licensing samples is inefficient and limits creativity. For instance, by estimating the present-day licensing fees for the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (1989) and Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet (1990), two albums from hip-hop’s golden age, the authors show that neither album could be released commercially today. Observing that the same dynamics that create problems for remixers now reverberate throughout all culture industries, the authors conclude by examining ideas for reform.

Interviewees include David Byrne, Cee Lo Green, George Clinton, De La Soul, DJ Premier, DJ Qbert, Eclectic Method, El-P, Girl Talk, Matmos, Mix Master Mike, Negativland, Public Enemy, RZA, Clyde Stubblefield, T.S. Monk.

Reviews

[A] very readable layman's guide to the legal framework underpinning the American sampling regime. . . . [A] great addition to the growing library of works showing that the endless addition of expanded property rights does nothing to 'promote the progress' of music, stifles expression and serves only to let Jimmy Page buy another Aleister Crowley first edition

[A] very readable layman's guide to the legal framework underpinning the American sampling regime. . . . [A] great addition to the growing library of works showing that the endless addition of expanded property rights does nothing to 'promote the progress' of music, stifles expression and serves only to let Jimmy Page buy another Aleister Crowley first edition." -- Peter Shapiro

Book

Other available formats

Contents

Download queue