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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Adam Behr
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This article argues for a view of popular music production that better accounts for sampling than has historically been the case by viewing it as a continuum of activity. Weighing evidence from interviews with musical practitioners against the legal and industry frameworks we illustrate, first, how sampling has been legally differentiated from other types of musical copying. Secondly we show that, despite this, comparable ethical codes exist within and across musical methods wherein sampling is part of the spectrum of activities. Thirdly, we discuss the ubiquity of digital technology within popular music production and the resultant closer relationship between sampling and other musical techniques moving onto, fourthly, how the sampling aesthetic has become integrated into musical practice in a manner insufficiently accounted for by its legal and industrial contexts. This ‘post-sampling’ reality places sampling and other musical techniques along a spectrum, in practical and ethical terms, and musicians would be better served by sampling being treated as part of the overall musical palette, allowing both scholars and the law to concentrate on ideologies of practice across the tools that musicians use rather than between different specific techniques.
Author(s): Behr A, Negus K, Street J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal for Cultural Research
Year: 2017
Volume: 21
Issue: 3
Pages: 223-240
Online publication date: 12/06/2017
Acceptance date: 01/06/2017
Date deposited: 05/06/2017
ISSN (print): 1479-7585
ISSN (electronic): 1740-1666
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2017.1338277
DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2017.1338277
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