Props to Loud.com for posting up this very informative video. Rich Isaacson, an Ivy League trained lawyer, left his job at a prestigious NY law firm to form LOUD Records with childhood friend Steve Rifkind in early 1992. A lifelong fan of urban music, Isaacson quickly immersed himself in the burgeoning hip-hop scene.
Currently Rich Isaacson is a legal, business and creative consultant for SRC Records and he sat down with Loud.com to discuss samples and getting them cleared. Rich also lets you know that replaying samples won’t get you around a lawsuit. Check it out!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Dope!!! This clears up the confusion about “Master” rights/usage and “Publishing” rights/usage. You should just email everyone involved with that Nas remix project this video; this pertains to ALL of US. This is straight talk from a cat in the biz. Peace
Well that’s clear!
I’m at work so I can’t check it just yet, but I’m not sure I really want to, cos y’all sound like there’s some bad news in there. Enlighten me: is there any possible way beatmakers can be legally pursued if they uses samples and make their work public (like on forums) but don’t distribute it with the intent of making money? I used to think that it was pretty safe to sample if you’re not distributing your work as a product, but that might have changed… Honestly speaking though, even if people like us aren’t technically allowed to sample without clearance for stuff like our remix contests, do you think anyone’s gonna bother about clearance from now on? Don’t forget that sampling lawsuits generally involve songs that have become hits and have some major radio and TV exposure - cos then you have the original artist or the record company (or both) going “Damn, somebody’s makin more money outta this than we did in the first place”..
if you dont use it commercially you can do what you want with a sample, thats what i know.
Let’s sa you press up your album as a copy of 1000CD’s. Who would sue you? there is no money to get in a little project like this. the only thing they would do is tell you not to sell that shit anymore.
That’s what I figured. So basically if you don’t even press CDs of your stuff for sale and just make it available via free download, you’re okay. Thinking about copyright issues in other domains, like photography for instance, however, I’m sure that it’s still not entirely legal, but yeah, given that nobody’ gettin paid off it, nobody cares
this was good to know thnx mayne
that recipe analogy kinda lost me.
where can I go to clear samples?