Peter Shukat, an entertainment lawyer, discusses sampling and the licenses that are necessary to sample music in a recording.

In this video clip, professor and copyright law expert Dr. E. Michael Harrington examines the legal challenges of sampling copyrighted material, and discusses why he believes sampling should, in some cases, have fair use privileges. He also discusses the sampling legal issues faced by hip hop group, N.W.A. when they released one of their top selling albums.

George Maloian, executive with APM Music, talks about major problems you can run into when using uncleared music samples.

If you’re a hip hop artist or producer, odds are, you either have or will be faced with the issue of using a sample in your music. The biggest problem with this is that most people wait until their music project is completed before they start dealing with the legal aspects associated with clearing those samples.

Typically, most independent releases selling no more than 10,000 records, remain under the radar and never draw broad enough attention to face the legal ramifications of not clearing samples. Having low sales expectations of your project and not clearing samples is still a dangerous place to be. You could have an unexpected huge hit from that release and find yourself in a very defenseless position. The owner of one uncleared sample could have that record pulled from your project or as for an unreasonable amount of payment because they are aware that you’re in a vulnerable spot.

So I’ll begin to walk you through the proper steps for getting samples cleared. Read the rest of this entry »