Here is how you clear a sample...

  • Thread starter Thread starter j.troup
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j.troup

j.troup

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I asked Wendy Day (@RapCoalition), what's the best way for an indie to clear a sample. She said check out...


www.DMGClearances.com​




I just called them up. Their president has over 20 years in the music business, and used to work for the major labels. She's pretty much standardized the prices for samples, regardless of whether you're DEANNAH DUKES, or EMINEM.



Basically their services go like this.



Stage 1

They research the song. Who holds and administers the copyrights and publishing, what record label released it, artists, etc, etc. Once they know that, then they write the formal letter, requesting the usage of the sample. The company sends a quote back, and then DMG negotiates from there. Once a price/terms are agreed upon, they contact you and let you know the deal...

The cost for that service is $240 for the master recording (using a piece of the actual record), and $240 for the publishing piece (if you only want to like replay the sample, but not use the actual RECORD it came from).



Stage 2


Once the price/terms are agreed upon, then payment has to be made. DMG will facilitate the payments, do all the legal paperwork for the licenses, etc etc. Again, this price is $240 per master, and $240 for the publishing.




Average Prices of the Sample



I asked about this and she said it depends. It depends on the record being sampled, if the sample was replayed or the master recording was used, and how much of the sample is contained in the new record. She said it DOESN’T matter who the artist is. It used to be if you were EMINEM and you wanted to use a sample, they’d ass rape you, but for an indie, they wouldn’t charge much. Now the prices are pretty standard.

You’d have to pay an advance of anywhere between $2000 and $5000 for the rights to use the Master, and $2000 - $5000 for the publishing (again, if you want to replay the sample). Now they could come back and say “we don’t want an advance, we just want to own a piece of the copyright to the song”. Or they could say “yeah, just give us 50% of the copyright of the song, and forget about the advance”. Or they could ask for a percentage of the royalties.

Any combination of the above could happen, so it really depends. But if you want to clear a sample, it’ll cost you at least $500 to find out how much it’s going to cost you to use the sample.



I’m going to go through the process of clearing a sample for this Deannah Dukes project. I feel like this song is going to be a huge song for us, and I want to be able to sell the song via all available retail outlets. I don’t want a scenario where the song starts gaining a lot of ground, and it all grinds to a halt because we didn’t clear the sample, so we have to stop selling the song, stop playing it on the radio, and we get sued for actual and punitive damages, and it puts us in the poor house.


But $11,000 is a small price to pay to ensure that this song has the room it needs to blast off.



So that’s it. That’s what I learned today. I’ll keep people posted on the sample clearing process.
 
if you pay $11,000 for a sample (1 song) to be cleared as an unsigned or small independent artist/label then your MENTAL!... simple as.

There is a moral to this story... DONT SAMPLE if your releasing the record yourself. If the artists is signed to a major or large indie then its the label who will pay that advance and the money will come out of the producers publishing. So even in this situation the label and producer are losing money from the get go.

Either dont clear the sample and risk it or sign to a major and them sort it out (then u even loose on publishing). Either way its rubbish!

If you wanna make money in this industry then DONT SAMPLE!!!!!!!!
 
JonnyBongo said:
if you pay $11,000 for a sample (1 song) to be cleared as an unsigned or small independent artist/label then your MENTAL!... simple as.

There is a moral to this story... DONT SAMPLE if your releasing the record yourself. If the artists is signed to a major or large indie then its the label who will pay that advance and the money will come out of the producers publishing. So even in this situation the label and producer are losing money from the get go.

Either dont clear the sample and risk it or sign to a major and them sort it out (then u even loose on publishing). Either way its rubbish!

If you wanna make money in this industry then DONT SAMPLE!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...



That's because $11,000 is big money to you. To me, it's not that much money.



Not clearing the sample is not an option. Because of the magnitude this song has the potential to have, not clearing it would mean that all the work is for nothing. This song...which is dependent on the sample...has the potential to launch this artists career. $11,000 is a small price to pay.

The worst thing that could happen is that the song starts to take off, and people want to license the song, play it on the radio all the time, put it in movies, etc, etc, and WE CAN'T because we didn't clear the sample.


If this song does what it's supposed to do, then she could be at $5000 per show in no time. Doing 3-5 shows per week. The sample will have more than paid for itself. Not to mention performance royalties (radio play) and sync royalties from placements in movies, etc.

Compared to those potential revenue streams, that $11,000 is nothing.


I generally don't sample, but this song has been on my heart for about 25 years. I believe in the potential of the song.


If it was just a promo song, then I wouldn't bother clearing the sample. But it's not. This is the ace in the hole. So it has to be cleared.


It's worth doing it the right way, RIGHT NOW. Because if we don't do it the right way now, we're gonna spend the rest of our time trying to re-create that magic...and it won't happen.



Not rubbish...just business.
 
or you can sample lesser known 'local' bands/musicians/artists and save yourself the extra money
 
How do you know what's big money too me?

Spending 11 stacks on a sample clearence for 1 song for an artist who is unknown, not signed to a major and doesn't have a substantial marketing budget behind them is just a bad business move.

At the end of the day it's your money. Good luck with it!
 
dwells said:
or you can sample lesser known 'local' bands/musicians/artists and save yourself the extra money
Click to expand...

Very true. I routinely farm indies/lesser known acts to fill my sampling needs. This one was just unavoidable.

---------- Post added at 12:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:57 PM ----------
JonnyBongo said:
How do you know what's big money too me?

Spending 11 stacks on a sample clearence for 1 song for an artist who is unknown, not signed to a major and doesn't have a substantial marketing budget behind them is just a bad business move.

At the end of the day it's your money. Good luck with it!
Click to expand...


Major or minor, it doesn't matter. A hit is a hit.


And every artist is unknown until they get a hit.


Do you know how much it costs a major to break an artist? Anywhere from $250,000 to 1 million dollars.


It's a risk, yes. But with the power of this song, it's worth it.
 
damn 11 Gs... It makes me wonder how any sample based producer can make it these days.


Really curious to hear this sample and song though.
 
I guess this is called "stepping out in faith", which sometime you must do, in order to achieve a dream. Good luck with the project.
 
SMH @ producers thinking $11,000 is big money. I've made $3,500-$5k off indie tracks where they were left to clear the samples. I'm sure if I cleared them myself, I would've been compensated very well.

If they paying me $5k for my work, why not pay another $5k to keep everything in tact? To clear things up, Mev was paid $10k for Glasses Malone's "Hater" track(no samples, but still the same type money). I'm pretty sure that was indie although Hoo Bangin is CMR affiliated. Could be wrong. He was paid because they had to fix a situation that wasn't taken care of 1st. They lost 10k they didn't budget for rather than knowing it was going out ahead of time.

By no means am I saying every indie pays like this, but if you plan to push a record hard, $11k to get things in tact so you're not obligated to others ahead of time is nothing. You'll end up investing a good $70k to get heard and rotated, what's $81k to be heard and not sued when the money starts piling in over $70k loss to never make a penny back because it all goes to the guy you stole the sample from? Just sayin.
 
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i'm a gambler.. there is a saying we use at the poker table that fits this scenario perfect... "scared money dont make money"... good luck on ur project uso.....
 
That's exactly it. If you really plan on pushing the record, then do it right.

Because if I sink 15k into getting radio play for the record, and pushing the album, and the sample isn't cleared, and I end up getting sued for 50k, that wipes out any money that I made from the record.


That's a risk I'm not personally willing to take.



But the purpose of the thread was not so much my business, but the business of clearing a sample, for those that it applies to.
 
I could understand both sides of the argument here as far as not clearing vs. clearing samples from a relatively unknown indie perspective. If somebody wants the piece of mind of knowing that they've already cleared the sample & therefore don't have to worry about future legal backlash then by all means do it. But i understand the dude who says i'm such a small fish they most likely won't catch it & even if they do won't deem me important enough to come after me. Troup feels the record will be a hit though so i see why he wants to cover his tracks.

A question i've been wanting to ask about is the "Best I Ever Had" Drake record. As we all know it was a sample but when it was released he was still relatively unknown & indie but the record caught fire really fast. Does anyone know if they cleared it ahead of time or not b/c i haven't heard anything about it other than that little Kia Shine thing where they used some lyrics he wrote for the hook but i'm talking about the actual beat.
 
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MUSIKFIEND said:
I could understand both sides of the argument here as far as not clearing vs. clearing samples from a relatively unknown indie perspective. If somebody wants the piece of mind of knowing that they've already cleared the sample & therefore don't have to worry about future legal backlash then by all means do it. But i understand the dude who says i'm such a small fish they most likely won't catch it & even if they do won't deem me important enough to come after me. Troup feels the record will be a hit though so i see why he wants to cover his tracks.

A question i've been wanting to ask about is the "Best I Ever Had" Drake record. As we all know it was a sample but when it was released he was still relatively unknown & indie but the record caught fire really fast. Does anyone know if they cleared it ahead of time or not b/c i haven't heard anything about it other than that little Kia Shine thing where they used some lyrics he wrote for the hook but i'm talking about the actual beat.
Click to expand...

"Best I ever had" was a royalty train wreck. I'm sure Coop could go into the details, or a google search, I don't wanna say the wrong thing, but I think the chorus was written for Khia Shine and Drake breeched some contrct by using it, so they had to pay him, then they didn't clear the sample or something, I can't remember, but I know it was a situation where I doubt they broke even after the bad response to the vid, but it did open floodgates for Drake to get big money so it wasn't a loss at all. Google it.
 
JonnyBongo said:
If you wanna make money in this industry then DONT SAMPLE!!!!!!!!
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or if u really want to make money in this industry dont make hip hop. your open to make so much more money making pop music than hip hop.
 
^^^All left to chance. RZa's a millionaire off sampled beats. The guys who sung the "I like girls who wear Ambercrombie and Finch" song aren't as rich as him off their pop music without samples. lol. :cheers:
 
Sampling is fine, as long as you know the BUSINESS of it. What I'm against is sampling randomly in crates with no concern of clearing the sample. I'm a big fan of sampling local acts, they are easier to deal with and simple to clear. and most of the time they will give up the session files also.
 
deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
^^^All left to chance. RZa's a millionaire off sampled beats. The guys who sung the "I like girls who wear Ambercrombie and Finch" song aren't as rich as him off their pop music without samples. lol. :cheers:
Click to expand...
yeah but that was back when you could make decent money with samples. In the 90s hell yeah Rza probably made some good dough off of samples. But how many current new producers could do the same with the way things are now?
 
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