Question:
If I record a sound clip of somebody talking from a tv show or movie, what are the ways about using it in music of mine legally? Searching here I haven’t been able to find the answer yet. Is it completely legal to do legally if I include where I got it from? Do I not have to worry as long as I dont become popular?
Question 2"
Also what about samples from copyrighted songs, or remixes mashups etc?? I dont want to end up more broke than I already am just because I didnt follow silly copyright law xy or z. Theres a difference between inspiration, modification, and plain taking without giving a f—.
Are these legitamate concerns? or should I take a trip to France to have a smoke and relax?
(Kaneel your tutorials are like watching a mini tv show, along with being informative. )
Pretty easy actually, all your points would be illegal to do in most cases. Also the often believed rule of only cuttinga a tiny amount out of a piece isn’t true, even if one wouldn’t notice it. Here in Germany there is a project from a guy running at the moment, who did a small piece of 0:33 seconds but with 70200 samples used from various sources. He will cleary state each sound source to the GEMA like required totalling in over 70000 forms for the GEMA to work through.
I’ve written most cases above, because you can find songs released under a creative commons license which would allow the things you want to do. I’ll doubt you’ll find any commercial chart music covered by this though. There are also different CC licenses, so you’d need to check your source which one applies.
For sampling movies you could search the net for public domain movies. I did the same a few times already and the Prelinger archive is a good starting point. These are perfectly fine to reuse in any way you want.
There’s legal, and there’s chance of prosecution. Do you live in the USA? If no, and you aren’t U2 or don’t expect to become them, or don’t play your music in elevators of music business lawfirms, it’s doubtful anyone will care. Danger Mouse and “the gray” album is a good historical lesson:
The above is straight up rip-off and he got busted because he started doing interviews on major radio stations within earshot of New York law firms. But without it, he would have not been known beyond his niche.