Music Sampling & Copyright Law In 15 Minutes

Abid Hussain has a unique set of skills – he’s an experienced producer and an Ableton Certified Trainer that also happens to be a licensed attorney.

This means he’s one of the few people that actually know what they’re talking about on topics like the use of samples in music production, sampling ‘rules of thumb’, the transformative use of samples and fair use of copyrighted audio works.

He’s been retained as an expert in copyright infringement cases, where he draws upon both his legal background and his production experience.

In this 15 minute session from Loop 2018, Hussain offers a quick introduction to key legal issues involved with music production, and talks about some recent legal rulings that affect music producers.

10 thoughts on “Music Sampling & Copyright Law In 15 Minutes

  1. Interesting presentation but tbh in those two examples I don’t see what was the point of sampling in the first place. There is no musical information to use. .

      1. well in that case he just spent 15 minutes of our lifes without any valuable insight on a subject he is supposed to be an expert. Why?

        1. Did you even watch the video?

          It makes very clear the idea of transformative sample use.

          Any other use of sampling is problematic, in that the moment your music gets noticed, you can get sued, unless you’ve pro-actively licensed your samples.

          And the ‘Blurred Lines’ case shows you can get in trouble without sampling, too.

          Everybody’s got an opinion on these things, but your opinion isn’t going to matter in court.

  2. Copyright law has come to a point where it doesn’t make sense anymore and they should remove it to give artists freedom of artistic expression…art should not be controlled.

    Example on YouTube you can claimed for copyright infringement from WMG for stuff which is obvious 100 % out of scope.

    But the examples used in the video above is pointless as mentioned in the other comments. Because the parts which is taken out is so basic samples that it wouldn’t be necessary to sample them from a song, but could have been done with any other sample…

    1. If they got rid of copyright, anybody could rip off your song and say it was theirs.

      That would be even worse than what we’ve got now.

      1. I don’t agree. Copyright lawyers and big record companies are making gold mines of this concept.

        I would rather live in the Wild Wild West as free, than living with a gun pointed at my forehead waiting for being triggered by usage on a sample, Chord or guitar riff claimed to be owned by Mr. Nobody.

        Art should not be controlled in my opinion!

        1. In other words, you have more to gain from ripping off established musicians than you have to lose by getting ripped off.

          Nobody has a gun to anybody’s head, saying you have to copy another musician’s work – that’s your choice.

          And if you want to do something creative and transformative samples, that’s what half of this presentation is about.

          1. ripping off established musician? < You mean greedy capital record companies, who buy back catalogues rights of classics only on the purpose of finding a way to earn money on non- established musician?

            I don’t agree with you, if you put the right sequence of notes into 16 bar of your sequencer and it becomes a hit, then someone can claim copyright infringement on the arrangement, though it has nothing to do with sampling. [There is a point where every note in every arrangement already has been tested]

            Again, you could put any sample/sound into that program and it would sound the same with that arrangement, because the essence has been cut away to nothing.

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