Hi All,
Just noticed this thread. I am not an entertainment lawyer, I know a few and one of them ( a close friend) is an artist as well. Just Google search "Tonya Evans music Sampling". She has written a few in-depth legal journal articles for the public. She has been involved with the HipHop scene in Philly since the 90s.
"Sampling, Looping, and Mashing … Oh My! How Hip Hop Music is Scratching More than the Surface of Copyright Law" by Tonya M. Evans
her blog...
http://proftevans.wordpress.com/tag/sampling/Cheers,
Ian
PS clearing samples is not that bad. If you are smart you just write everything down in the beginning and keep track of those notes associated with your song. It is only a pain when you have to go back and figure everything out. You want to note the song, precise moments of the songs that you sampled, the artists and the label.
Sometimes it is better to have the lawsuit because you will get the publicity. So what if you have to share the revenue from that one song and pay a lawyer a few thousand. If you release it in a compilation then it may affect the revenue of the other songs as well. So think it through. No one is going to sue you if you are not valuable. Depending on what you are doing you may just get a cease and desist order not a full on go to court for months situation. More than likely if you had a hit recording and got sued you would come to an agreement with the plaintiff, so the money would come out of the sales of the song. Read up, it gets interesting.
