The Creativity/Cost of Sampling

Earlier in this blog it was said that a reason that one might sample another’s work is because “it eliminates the need to produce background and accompaniment music for vocals.” It was also said that sampling, “lowers entry costs and overall production costs, and means that music can be created more quickly.” This in my opinion somehow insinuates that sampling simplifies music production and lowers cost.

However, if this is true then why do record labels and hip hop/rap artist pay producers such as Kanye West, Just Blaze, and Rza hundreds of thousands of dollars for beats (instruments that are used as background tracks) that sample music? Kanye West who is arguably one of the most prominent hip hop artist and producer used a sample track for every single song on his first three albums, and heavily used samples in the production of one of Jay-Z’s multi-platinum album, The Blueprint. If one were to search for Just Blaze in Wikipedia it can be seen that under the list of instruments that he is proficient in is the sampler.

What is Bridgeport’s true aim in pursuing so many copyright infringement lawsuits, and what are the possible repercussions that their actions can have the hip hop industry? As Heather said in a previous blog entry, it would seem that Bridgeport’s aim would be to simply hold the copyright to numerous works. It appears that they simply attempt to collect on technical copyright infringements with no real desire to benefit the artist that originally created the music. The effect that these types of actions would have on the hip hop industry if broadly applied and heavily enforced would be to hinder a very creative and shifting artistic movement.

The concept that music producers and to a lesser degree the hip hop artists are simply taking an old song and trying to use someone's creativity for free is a very narrow and ignorant way of thinking about music production. This is not to say however that there is not some sort of limit to the amount of sampling that a producer or artist can do without giving/paying credit to the original creator, because there definitely is. What should be clear is that there is a gradient and companies such as Bridgeport are at times extreme in their pursuit of lawsuits and may in the future greatly hinder the creative evolution of the hip hop movement.