I listened to a super interesting podcast last week about sample libraries in popular music that I thought I would share as it is an interesting combination of issues to do with copyright and pop music – alongside a little twitter feud.

In February 2020, Justin Bieber released his newest album “Changes” and shortly after was accused by another, lesser-known artist, Asher Monroe, on Twitter of ripping off one of his beats in Bieber’s song “Intention”. While the beats are indeed identical in the two songs, it isn’t because Bieber ripped off Monroe’s song, but because both artists got the sample from a third artist, Laxity, a producer who makes beats and puts them Splice.com. Splice.com is a royalty-free website where artists and producers can post samples for others to use free of charge. Before I heard this story, I had no idea such a system of sampling existed, but it is actually a huge industry. In 2019, the CEO of Splice said that people listen to over 60 million samples on the site each week and samples from Splice can be found in a ton of popular songs.

This sample library industry is in large part a creation of stricter copyright rules that came out of cases in the 1990s. In the 1980s, samples like this were considered to be a fair use way of using someone else’s work under US copyright law and the use of samples, especially in hip hop music, was prolific. A 1991 US District Court case Grand Upright Music Ltd v Warner Bros Records Ltd effectively ended free for all sampling in the music industry. The Court invoked the maxim “thou shall not steal” in its decision, ruling that sampling without permission constituted a copyright infringement and requiring all artists to get permission to sample other artists work in advance. Another important case in this context was Bridgeport Music v Dimension Films, a 2005 case from the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that ruled that the usage of any section of work, regardless of the length, would constitute a violation of copyright without the owner’s permission. The sample in question in the case was a 2 second long guitar chord. In its decision the court wrote “Get a license or do not sample”.

After these cases, songs and albums featuring a lot of samples became cost prohibitive to produce – one estimate put the cost of getting permission for a single sample at $10,000. This lawsuit, and others that follow, gave rise to the creation and growth of online sample music libraries where these samples are more affordable for artists to use. Interestingly these sample libraries have led to a sort of democratization whereby new and upcoming artists have a platform to have others listen to, and sometimes, sample their music.

Podcast: https://player.fm/series/reset-2555404/how-sample-libraries-are-changing-pop-music
Relevant Article: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/17/21140838/justin-bieber-changes-running-over-asher-monroe-synergy-splice-sample-melody

Many of you would have heard about the devastating bushfires in Australia earlier this year, which sparked an influx of donations, including $150 million alone being donated to the Australian Red Cross. Many of these donations were collected through ‘Big Tech’ with companies like Apple, Google and even the Call of Duty game, providing ways for users to donate.

The most prominent fundraiser was set up by Australian Comedian Celeste Barber which raised over $51 million on GoFundMe as of the 17th of January. However, this money is yet to be spent due to numerous legal issues. The main issue is that the online fund was set up to go to the Trustee for NSW Rural Fire Service for ‘equipment, training and resources’ for firefighters, however, given the extent of the donations, Barber also wants to donate money to services in other states. However, legally the trust must use the money for the stated purpose and cannot donate the funds to other charities, despite Barber changing the scope of the fundraiser online and telling donators it would go to charities in Vic and SA.

More information can be found here: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/celeste-barber-nsw-rfs-funds-not-spend-2020-2

Following through with its promises to deliver on media manipulation, Twitter, for the first time, tagged a recent post by President Trump as manipulated. Twitter’s policies on manipulated media went into effect on March 5th and this instance is believed to be the first time the company has applied the “manipulated media” tag (see screenshot in article below). Time will tell how effective this policy will be and its effect, if any, on the President’s future behaviour. Important to note however, is that Twitter has indicated repeat offenders will be banned from the platform. It will be very interesting to see how Twitter follows through on this commitment. Given his track record for re-tweeting doctored media, perhaps this policy may mark the end of Donald Trump’s use (and mis-use) of his favourite social media platform.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/8/21170714/twitter-manipulated-media-biden-video-retweeted-trump