I'm gonna put this in its own post because i edited the last one to include it and keys saw the gif before i got the edit out.
I'm kinda of two minds when approaching this topic. I also don't really have much knowledge when it comes to the legal side of things. I understand both sides of the argument though and from what I can tell sampling is still very much (albeit less so than in the past) the wild west when it comes to music. I think that sampling really does breathe new life into certain music, and I think some external clause should be in order when concerned with making a completely new sound from an already produced piece of music. I'm not talking about cutting loops without any editing, but chopping, rearranging, and doing sound design to change it into something completely different. In my eyes, those type of beats, if they were used for monetary gain should always be cleared in full upon creation. I think there's an argument there for fair use otherwise, albeit a relatively flimsy one. I also think that with the way sampling is so prevalent in music there needs to be some way to circumvent the tangle of red tape for smaller artists who don't have the weight to throw around like the bigger names who don't have to worry about paying to clear samples. Maybe a percentage of profit oriented system that is dictated by units sold up to the point that the fee to clearing a sample is paid off. It's not like you control what blows up 9 times out of 10. Granted that will almost always result in the little guy getting fucked anyway because the only way to absolve the money owed is through litigation regardless. Unfortunately in real life David is inevitably stomped by Goliath.
The music industry is a monsterous behemoth that is known to fuck people who aren't operating in a legal grey area let alone someone who is sampling. Look at The Verve. They used a sample in Bittersweet Symphony and didn't make a cent off the song until 2019. They sampled a Rolling Stones song so they didn't get paid until Mick Jagger and Keith Richards released the royalties. They even cleared the sample for fuck sakes, they just got into a legal battle over the amount that was used. I don't think that should happen. Let alone having the money put into someone else's hands for over two decades.
It's a tricky subject. Especially when a lot of artists have signed the rights to their work away to a record company that will fight tooth and nail to protect their assets. I think out of anything I'm against the industry itself.
I think above all else its a matter of scale. A buddy of mine made a song using a beat that he found on youtube which used skyfall - adele as the hook before we knew anyone who made beats, or knew how to ourselves. It didn't just get demonetized, it got copyright struck mainly because it started getting a little bit of traction and hit around 6-7000 views. Dude was virtually unknown, and had no way of monetizing it even if he wanted to. I think theres something wrong with that. There was no money exchanging hands in any of it. Somehow though he has a track that is still up that was sampled from metallica of all bands that isn't copyright stricken still to this day 10ish years later.
I'm obviously mostly talking off the cuff, but I think there could be a way to determine the monetary value of sampling a song from an artist that could be determined by the units sold of the original itself, and until that is paid off, a percentage of the royalties/units sold on the sampled track goes to the original artist until the amount is paid in full. This both allows the second creator to make money and the original to get its dues paid. The biggest problem I see in this is the original artist's own ego or the label's greed. I'm a firm believer in the free market of ideas. I don't see anything wrong with a system that not only limits excessive litigation, but allows for transformative creation. The biggest hurdle would be deciding on a number to put to the value of a song. At least there is somewhat of a number that you could place as a starting point with the original selling what it did at the point of the release of the sampled version.
