What hasn’t been done has already been done before. Music, film or literature that is new and innovative may not be appealing to a broad swath of the general public, and hence techniques to appeal to the lowest common denominator emerge. One method of choice is the practice of sampling in music.
Sampling is when an artist takes a snippet, or often times a larger piece, of another artist’s music in order to create their own “new” music. The new song is built and relies on the sample. This varies from a simple starting point to create more original music to near rehashing of music with slight variations made to it.
In a TED talk, English DJ Mark Ronson, who created the popular “Uptown Funk” with Bruno Mars, described and went through a large amount of evidence revealing a recycling of melodies in pop songs. One example is the numerous times Slick Rick’s “La Di Da Di” has been used — over 500 times — in hip hop and pop songs. Sometimes it is a sample of Slick’s catchy “La Di Da Di” mixed into a larger composition, but sometimes it is a rehash of the song’s melody, which Miley Cyrus did in her hit song “We Can’t Stop.” In this example, the line between sampling and stealing is blurred and difficult to distinguish.

On the one hand, artists find inspiration and a creative spark when listening to other artists from the past or current soundscape. The liberal nature of music has created an environment where creative whims can be explored with little fear of repercussion. The free marketplace of music creation yields results that are lackluster and results that are outstanding.
On the other hand, there is a difference between sampling in order to create music. It often comes from picking and choosing from obscure titles from past generations. Trying to insert oneself into the sound and feeling of that music, when they grew up listening to it, is fair and noble by resurrecting a feeling of familiarity to anchor a new song. This evokes memories and experiences from past times. Yet the example of Miley Cyrus using the tune of “La Di Da Di” in her song “We Can’t Stop” is suspect, because she was not even alive when Slick Rick released that original track. Borrowing elements, not wholesale melodies and tunes, is what sampling, hip-hop and pop music can thrive on to continue creating music that our generation loves, and that holds itself to a high artistic standard.
The recycling of some music is understandable. Like fashion, music trends come, go and resurge. What speaks to one generation can ring true for another farther removed, and this speaks to shared experiences and emotions across generational divides.
Apart from the discussion about the tastefulness or ethics of sampling is the legal issue of copyright protections for songs, and how the law can be interpreted in numerous ways. Questions that arise stem from the main question of whether a song’s copyright only protects the entire embodiment of the song from being copied, or whether that copyright extends to protecting even the smallest snippets.
This question was answered in the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in the Bridgeport Music INC. v. Dimension Films. The case involved the rap group NWA, where they had sampled a two second guitar riff from a Funkadelic song without their permission. The court ruled that even the smallest snippet of a song is still protected by copyright laws.
Though the protection of songs in their entirety should undoubtedly be protected, and even major melodies or choruses, the insistence of artists, big or small, to receive permission for a handful of notes to create something new and beautiful stifles creation.
The consequences for having too strict of copyright regulations will be detrimental for the music industry. Setting a barrier that’s too high for artists to grow and experiment with music will keep many young and budding artists out of the music picture. Copyright laws should be reformed so that small, one to five second samples can be used for artistic purposes without expressed permission from the original artists, while still protecting the copying of the entire song or major elements such as the chorus, lyrics or melodies. Having a reformed law on copyrights that is stricter in some areas, while more relaxed in others, will lift a large burden off of the shoulders of individual artists. This change would simplify the creative process for young artists while also preventing the tasteless recycling of other artists’ work.
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