Sampling licences

Does any body know anything about sampling drum machines etc and then selling them yourself?for example I have a modified xd-5 and a k4r that I would like to sample and repackage,is it legal to do so?i see inumerable packs of 909s 808s for sale,I presume if it’s a machine that you can make music with without worrying about copyright then it must be safe to sample,if not what’s with all the 909,808,606 packs etc

It’s an interesting question and to me it seems there is no definitive answer that covers it entirely. If there is i’d like to know.

In my opinion i think it shouldn’t be a problem, but my opinion matters very little in legal issues i’m afraid. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not a lawyer and it’s advised to simply check with the company yourself. The general guidelines are ‘usually’ the following, it does not matter if software or hardware based. If the sound generation is realtime generated and you have programmed all the sounds yourself it’s normally ok to sample them and use them as own creation, it’s not ok to just sample the default factory sounds. More restricted are usually samplers, romplers. You can’t just sample a Piano for example of Kontakt, but if you have created the source samples yourself and programmed some patches with it, then you’re fine. I did set ‘usually’ in quotes, because i have seen companies trying to forbid this in their EULAS, so i would first check there.

That’s weird tho I mean what about all the 909s and whatnot,not just Roland but just for example

What exactly is weird? For the 909 it uses a mixture of realtime generated sounds and sample based sounds. Start from the INIT preset, program some patch and it’s usually your creation then. The more interesting aspect in this case are the sounds which use the samples as source. Maybe Roland is ok with it or simply does not care. That’s why you should check with the company itself if you want 100% security. I suppose a lot is done in a grey area too. I mean if you have created those sounds, then processed them with some compression, tape warming or whatever else you’re forming them even more to yours. Maybe you having modified gear already qualifies to some degree too? I can’t answer that. Just my personal opinion this. There is no ‘defintive’ answer. The above is just some general guidelines. Apply common sense, you should have put some effort in creating the sounds and making them your creation, not just ripping of something. There is of course exceptions like sampled vinyls, i have no idea how this is handled legally and how much of a piece is considered a sample or not. There is some things on archive.org, like old movies and the like which are under public domain license which are totally fine to sample and even selling them. Point is, check with the company, they should be able to tell you.

I can see similarities to sampling movies which is quite common in some genres, If the song just sells a few hundred times probably no one will come knocking on the door or even care, but if it’s a million seller you probably have to clear the usage and actually pay for it.