Sample whatever you want, especially non music related audio, if you’re streaming 7 million a month, make your label clear the samples, otherwise go for it.
Obviously don’t sample other musicians, especially in the same genre as you, be more creative!
Worse that will happen is you will get a cease and desist to stop selling, streaming, or performing that song you ripped off.
~Then you can sell your extra vinyl test press copies on Discogs because the “cancelled” song is now even more rare and famous from the controversy! Next it’s time to whore your remix skills to a major label and sell out, ignore the fact the underground will reject you when you come back groveling because your sound gets stale. In a year or two you’ll be a curious footnote on some music bloggers forum, ten years from now a rapper or country singer will ironically sample your track but actually have the copyright licensed and make a ton of money playing shows based on its popularity… well done you’ve just created the next Billy Ray Cyrus and Achy Breaky Heart will haunt humanity for the next century, torturing souls and making innocent children cry with pain when they hear it.
How about sampling generative voices? Such as text to speech engines found on computers, smart assistants like Siri, or I presume coming soon (if not already here) AI voices.
Is it legal to get a text to speech engine to say something, sample it, and use that in a song?
I recently made a track for a client that used AI generated audio dialogue. It was submitted and rejected from their Content ID approval because it used AI generated audio which they state in their T&Cs could confuse the Content ID system because anyone could also potentially legally generate that identical audio source.
So I recorded the dialogue myself and processed it (needed be an obviously female voice and I don’t sound very female).
They rejected it again and I needed to send them a video of a screen record showing the DAW project and proving that I had generated the audio for the dialogue.
So just beware / be prepared if you want to use an aggregator or anything where Content ID is involved.
Watched a Sisqo interview about the Thong Song. Crazy to find out that Ricky Martin’s representatives sued and got paid a large sum just because of the line “Livin La Vida Loca” was used in it. Must be a lot of people working in the clearance department at Warner and Universal.
I don’t blame routenote (the aggregator my client was using) for the hassle. I understand they are interfacing with a system of revenue transfer that requires a method of identifying content to ensure the owner gets paid. That’s totally fine by me. Happy to jump through hoops to ensure my client gets paid what he is due. I think we are stuck in the ad-funded Internet model for a while tbh. People had gotten used to stuff being “free” (i.e. funded by ads and data collection) online and until there is a bigger shift towards a more contributory model (patreon makes a good effort for example as do sites like bandcamp and the coffee jar thing) there will always be awkwardness about ownership because big money will have the final word rather than the artist or the audience.
I’ll probably rethink this tomorrow cos it’s late here and I’ve had a few!!
Personally I think it’s ethically fine to sample anyone else’s creations for artistic purposes. And that includes political art in my view. Everything is on the table until money comes into play but that’s only because lawyers exist. But then again money is political so perhaps that’s fine if you can win… Yet again its just survival of the fittest(nah)/richest/most well connected. I am a cynic generally, and I don’t want the Hobbesian view to be true but perhaps it is and its all just a power game in the end…
But seriously there is a clear contextual separation re this issue… If you’re an artist just go for it and fuck 'em all until they take you down or you outwit them, but if you’re a producer or engineer who works with other artists professionally it behoves one to look into this topic and give sound advice - I’ve certainly learned a lot by working with this client - I’m an engineer and a composer first and foremost - but my choice to work with clients means I’ve got to try to understand these issues too so I can help them. I’m driven by the desire to help - whether that be sonically or in another sphere and I hate not knowing the answer to a question a client asks me. Plus if he is successful with his art he’ll keep coming back for more sessions! Selfish/not selfish/one-ish
What’s worse is if by some system error you end up getting flagged/blacklisted on your account for posting anything that might trigger whatever the tool the site is using to recognize samples… maybe that’s why a lot of genres shifted to lo-fi
I’m saying this from a disappointed angle after learning your actual work wasn’t believed to be true btw and not comparing it to sampling others’ works.
Haha yeah I’ve not had one of my own creations trigger any of these trip wires yet… But there’s time! The machines are taking over but they’re not yet fully ready and instead they’ve co-opted us gullible humans to do their bidding in the meantime… I reckon these rejections from routenote were human derived from the outset - a person listened, heard the style of music (phonk??!) and thought “most people who are sending this style of track in to us are just sampling like crazy off the web so we gotta cover our asses”.
On a total digression - the client wanted a video for the track too (for YouTube). He sent me a boring still image he’d photographed and would have been happy with that still image throughout. But I wasn’t. So I loaded up after effects and had a mess about with the Kaleida plugin and some expressions / sine functions. Wow that was fun! Love a bit of maths. Two kaleida plugins on top of each other with a bit of glow and off you go! Mushroom trip right there. Used a bpm to hertz calculator to get the numbers right for a nice rhythmic match to the sludgy distorted house music that is Phonk. Highly recommend playing with kaleida if you’ve got after effects.
I don’t think it’s that all the way necessarily, but could also be a result of the humans controlling these things and wanting a phat paycheck for mediocre/unfinished work. If people actually sat and listened to the track I’d be amazed, but I honestly don’t know what’s going on at that scale.
I’ve already thought of about 10 workarounds but it’s just extra work lmao. One being, hosting a site, uploading your samples there, making the UI resemble something current with a theme, and then saying, “hey the site said it was legal,” when asked (like what seems to be the case in a lot of other industries both big/small).
That’s actually awesome, and I had not heard of that until you mentioned it! It’s been a while since messing around with un-cracked adobe software Hopefully your client recognized your extra efforts because that’s cool of you to do
This won’t work because as soon as the content is publicly available for unlimited use, anyone can legally use it, therefore it can’t be attritbuted solely to the artist in question via Content ID… That’s the core reason why I couldn’t use the text to speech content, nor ANY royalty free audio samples even if they have full rights relinquished. It’s a contradiction when taken to extremes… Who owns the key of C#minor???
Really digging your soundcloud by the way… Started at ED and moving through now.
Yeah well corporate structure demands profit and that’s an emergent property - some individuals are more to blame for that but we are all responsible in the end. Vote with your wallet etc. I do think humans listen to every submission to route note. Or at least those flagged for listening by the machines. I’d love to hear the inside scoop from a content moderator for one of these aggregators. Anyone out there for that description??
Hopefully your client recognized your extra efforts because that’s cool of you to do