Sample Clearance :: 20/20 Vision

You didn't expect me to go here with these, did you? Yeah, I didn't either. Hi guys, thanks for tuning in. We're going to talk about sample clearance today. Um, so this is for producers and rappers, those of you that want to use samples in songs. You really need to clear them. There are no free samples. You cannot use the excuse, oh, I'm using somebody else's song but I'm giving it away for free. That doesn't fly. There is no free samples. You have to clear anything you use that belongs to somebody else. So if you take a line from a song, um, that somebody else has already used, you need to clear that. If you take it from the actual recording then you've got to clear it through the record label and whoever owns the publishing on that. If you resay it or you replay some music instead of actually sampling it, you know, by putting like a needle on the vinyl or taking a clip of it from the internet or, you know, the physical sampling process of it, which requires the clearance of the actual master copy and the publishing, If you interpolate it or you re-sing it or you replay it or you re-wrap it yourself, then you only have to clear the publishing. You save the money from having to clear the master rights. I did a video about 2 years ago with Deborah Manus Gardner, and it's on my YouTube page, and it's— I think it's titled something like Sample Clearances. I actually think I did 2 interviews with her, and I'm gonna refer you to both of them, because she does this for a living and she's so great at clearing samples. The thing about clearing samples is if you don't know what the going rate is to clear something, how can you negotiate with somebody effectively when you don't know what's fair and acceptable? So you don't know if you're paying them too much, you don't know if you're paying them not enough, you don't know if there's something missing from the paperwork that needs to be in there. You just don't know. So I'm a big fan of hiring a professional. There is always the opportunity for you to just put something out and hope that nobody notices that there's a sample in it. Um, the downside of that is it can end up costing you a lot of money in the long run, and the person that owns whatever you're sampling, the copyright, has the right to make you take it down, and that can get really costly when you put something up. One of my clients has a song and the producer has a— had a sample in that song, but he signed a contract that said there was no sample in that song. But lo and behold, after we had spent about $50,000 on the song in marketing and promotion, the person who owned the original copy of what was in that song filed a claim at YouTube and shut him down. He shut him down immediately. So not only were there 2 copyright strikes against his YouTube page— and 3 copyright strikes makes your page get taken down— not only were there 2 copyright strikes because there was a clean version and a dirty version of the song, and they count that as 2 different strikes— not only were there strikes against it, but it left us to scramble find out who it was that shut it down, reach out to them, find out why they shut it down. Because remember, we had a contract that said there was no sample in this song, and lo and behold, there was. So as we're moving forward working this, this song in order to get it put back up on YouTube in the midst of a radio campaign, we ended up having to pay the person who was sampled and change the paperwork so that they would get their proper publishing credit for the song. Fortunately, it was an independent artist. It wasn't at a major label, because had it been at a major label, they would have wanted another fee on top of the publishing clearance fee. They would have wanted a fee to clear the master license, and they could have said no. They could have very easily said, "Nah, we don't want you to use that. Take it down." Sample clearance. You've got to clear it. You don't want your initial entrée into the music industry to be getting sued by a major publisher, a minor publisher, a record label. Yes, you can take the risk and you can put something out and hope to God that they don't sue you, But why would you take that risk? You can either use a different track, use a different sample that might be a little cheaper. You can go to one of the companies like Slice, or, um, I can't remember the names of the other companies that are out here, but there's companies that actually exist where you can go in, use a sample from something that's already pre-cleared, pay like $99 or $199 and cleared, and I'll list them below here so that you can find out who they are when you get to— when you view this on my YouTube page. I won't do it on Instagram, but I'll do it on the YouTube page so that as a producer or a rapper, you can choose a sample that's already been pre-cleared and you know what it's going to cost you to use it. There's just no reason in 2020 to not clear a sample or to use a sample that you can't clear and run the risk of getting shut down. It just doesn't— it just doesn't make logical sense. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. Check out the interview that I did with Deborah Manus Gardner. If you need to clear samples, she's at DMGSampleClearances.com, listing it below, um, on the YouTube page, not on the Instagram page. Um, and that's it. I think I've covered everything that I want to say about sample clearance. I understand why you want to do it. I understand why it's part of the culture. I came up under the culture of sample clearance that did that as well. Um, but I always tell my clients, I'd rather spend that money on marketing and promotion than on clearing a sample. Thanks for tuning in. Bye, guys.