What EMI's six-month sample amnesty means for the music industry

Gun, knife, drug, International … these may be the more commonly known forms of amnesty, but Sony/ATV, the biggest music publisher in the world, is looking to introduce another category: sampling.

From Tuesday 1 September, any artist who has used a sample from the company’s EMI Production Music division – the library music arm that controls both the composition rights and the sound recordings to a vast number of musical works including the News at Ten, Mastermind and Grandstand theme tunes – will have a six-month window in which they can step forward and hold their hands up. Sony/ATV will then do a licensing deal, at current market rates, for future exploitation of the works but, crucially, it will not seek retrospective royalties for past sales or exploitations, no matter how many years back they might stretch.

The music publishing industry has often been accused of dragging its feet when responding to new technology. One needs only look at the first decade of hip-hop’s evolution, where it found itself sucked into a quagmire of licensing uncertainty and confusion. This amnesty, the first of its kind by a major music company, could help fast-track licensing into something that is truly fit for the 21st century.

“I was thinking about how electronic music and sampling had been around for over 30 years,” says Alex Black, EMI Production Music’s global director, on the origins of the amnesty.

“Everyone you meet in that sampling and record production community loves the KPM series. They’d tell me they have albums from the catalogue and have used a cheeky sample here or there. It was born out of that.”

The aforementioned KPM catalogue is the jewel in EMI Production Music’s crown and has previously been diced and sliced by major acts including Jay Z (People’s Court samples Alan Tew’s The Big One), Fatboy Slim (Punk to Funk draws on Keith Mansfield’s Young Scene), Gorillaz (Latin Simone is partly built from Mansfield’s Incidental Backcloth No 3) and Jurassic 5 (What’s Golden samples Clive Hicks’ Look Hear).

But catching what Black describes as “cheeky samples” can be a difficult and time-consuming job for publishers. Rather than use the sledgehammer of ligation, Sony/ATV is trying a different tactic.

“It would be good for everyone if we ran an amnesty to allow people to come forward and clear those samples without the fear of financial penalties for past royalties,” explains Black.

This is far from a panacea for licensing in 2015, but should instead be seen as a first step to modernise the business of sampling. For the moment, the amnesty only covers EMI Production Music because the licensing process, where it owns master and publishing, can be approved in one deal. “That is why library music has always been seen as a good source of samples,” says Black. “We can do one-stop clearance.”

This amnesty will not, for now, extend to the rest of Sony/ATV’s publishing catalogue. If you sample from it and don’t declare it, legal action will almost certainly follow.

A longstanding industry maxim is “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ” and publishing – as it is the primary hurdle that any use of music must clear, be it a cover, a direct sample or a recreation – is where many have come a cropper. Arguably the most notorious example of this is the Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony in 1997, which drew on the Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra’s version of The Last Time by the Rolling Stones. As documented in Fred Goodman’s recent biography of US business manager Allen Klein, who died in 2009, the rights to the composition and recording were both owned by ABKCO, Klein’s company, set up specifically to apply a vice-like approach to music licensing and royalty collections, starting with Sam Cooke and eventually including the Stones.

Klein was an arduous negotiator, who made it a personal mission to win any dispute. The late Jazz Summers managed the Verve at the time and in his memoir, Big Life, recounts just how out of their depth they were when they realised they had to negotiate with Klein. ABKCO, with little discussion, offered a 50/50 deal on the publishing. Summers presumed Klein meant 50% to the Verve (as Richard Ashcroft had written new lyrics and the sample was only a small component of the song) and 50% to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, as the original writers. Klein, however, meant 50% to Jagger and 50% to Richards. Which is why Ashcroft will never have his name on or make a penny from the publishing on his biggest hit.

Another famous sampling dispute was only resolved after 12 years of wrangling in the German courts. In 2000, Kraftwerk took legal action against rapper Sabrina Setlur for using a two-second rhythmic sample of Metal on Metal on her Nur Mir track. The case ricocheted around various levels of Germany courts, with the supreme court eventually issuing a landmark ruling in Kraftwerk’s favour, in December 2012.

Coldplay might have managed to clear a synth hook from Kraftwerk’s Computer Love in their track Talk, but they later managed to fall foul of Joe Satriani. He took them to court, claiming “substantial, original portions” of his song If I Could Fly were used on their hit Viva La Vida. The case was eventually settled in 2009. Terms were not made public, but Billboard reported at the time that “a financial settlement between the two parties may have been reached” and that “Coldplay will not be required to admit to any wrongdoing”.

Kevin Parker of Tame Impala is currently facing legal action from Samm Culley of 1970s funk group Skull Snaps. He claims that Eventually, a song on Tame Impala’s most recent album, sampled drums from It’s A New Day by Culley’s old band. “WOW unexpected compliment!” Parker wrote on his Instagram account when the lawyer’s letter landed. “The creator of the famous Skull Snaps drum sample thinks my drums IS his actual sample and wants to sue me for not clearing it! Haha!! Sam Culley you have 3 days to fire your musicologist. Anyone think this could be a hoax though?” The suit was not a hoax but has yet to be resolved or reach court.

While the moves by Sony/ATV are not going to remove such legal tussles, it might make things more straightforward, and certainly less terrifying, for acts further down the food chain who infringe on copyrights in their samples either through bullishness or naivety.

“With the rise of the home producer and the fact that you don’t really need a record label to release anything, [sampling is] a DIY part of the business,” says Black. “We are not viewing the amnesty as a way to catch out people who have intentionally not cleared a sample. It’s more about raising awareness rather than trying to catch anyone out.”

That said, there will be many who’ll never know how lucky they are to experience this move towards a more measured sample clearance process. In the past, a worst-case scenario would have been going up against ABKCO, where a blessing would have been to end negotiations with the shirt still on your back.