Sample clearance: the complete guide for producers

Sample clearance sounds like paperwork, and mostly it is. But it decides whether your record can come out at all, and who gets paid if it does. So it's worth understanding properly, even if you never plan to clear a sample yourself.

What sample clearance actually means

Clearing a sample means getting written permission from the people who own the music you sampled, before you release your track. That permission is a license. It spells out what you can use, where you can release it, what you pay upfront, and what share of your song's income the owners keep.

Without it, you're using someone else's property. It doesn't matter if you bought the record or credited the original artist in the description. Credit isn't permission.

The two rights inside every sample

This is the part most producers miss. Every recording you could sample contains two separate copyrights, usually owned by different companies.

If you lift audio from a record, you need both. Get a yes from the label and a no from the publisher, and you still can't release it. That's why clearance is slow: you're running two negotiations at once, with two companies that don't talk to each other.

How to clear a sample, step by step

1. Document exactly what you used. Song title, artist, the timestamp you took it from, how long it is, and how it sits in your track. Owners will ask.
2. Find the master owner. Start with the label on the original release. Old catalogs get bought and sold, so the label on the sleeve isn't always the one that owns it today.
3. Find the publisher. Search the song in the public repertoire databases of performing rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC in the US, or PRS in the UK. They list the writers and publishers.
4. Send a clear request to both. Include your track, a short description of the use, how you plan to release it, and your expected audience. Rights holders get a lot of requests, so make yours easy to say yes to.
5. Negotiate the terms. Expect an upfront fee and a share of your song, on each side.
6. Get it in writing before you release. A friendly email isn't a license. You want signed agreements from both sides.

Here's the step-by-step version, with a request you can copy. Some producers hire a clearance company or a music lawyer to do steps two to six. That costs money on top of the fees, but they know who to call and what a fair deal looks like.

What it costs to clear a sample

There's no price list. Every owner sets their own terms, and the price moves with how famous the original is, how prominent it is in your track, and how big your release could be. Still, the figures producers and distributors commonly quote for an independent release look roughly like this:

Big artists and famous records can go far beyond that. And the upfront fee usually isn't the painful part. The publishing share is permanent: if the owners take 50% of your song, they take 50% of everything it ever earns, including the parts you wrote. Here's the full breakdown of what clearing a sample costs.

How long clearance takes

Weeks at best, and months is normal. Big labels and publishers get far more requests than they can answer, so small releases often sit at the bottom of the pile. If your artist has a release date locked in, starting clearance after the beat is finished is usually too late.

What happens if you don't clear it

Plenty of producers release uncleared samples and nothing happens. Until something does. The usual ways it catches up with you:

• Your distributor takes the track down. Most ask you to confirm samples are cleared, and they act on complaints.
• Your income gets redirected. On YouTube, Content ID can hand your track's ad revenue to the rights owner.
• You get a demand or a lawsuit. This usually happens once a track is successful, which is exactly when you have the most to lose. See what happens if you use an uncleared sample.

The courts have been blunt about it. In the 1991 case against Biz Markie over "Alone Again", the judge opened the ruling with "Thou shalt not steal." In 2005, a US appeals court ruled on a two-second sample and summed it up in five words: "Get a license or do not sample."

"But it's only two seconds"

There's no reliably safe length. The 2005 ruling above said any copying of a recording, however short, needs a license. In 2016, a different US appeals court disagreed and let a 0.23-second horn hit in Madonna's "Vogue" slide as too small to matter. So the courts don't agree, and you don't want your record to be the one that settles it.

The practical rule: if a listener could recognize it, or if you'd be annoyed if someone lifted it from you, clear it.

The Content ID trap

Even when you use samples you're allowed to use, there's one more thing to know. YouTube's Content ID only accepts songs where you own everything in them exclusively. Songs built on samples licensed to lots of producers at once (like any sample library, including ours) aren't eligible.

If two producers flip the same licensed sample and both register their songs, Content ID ends up claiming one against the other. So if your track is built on a licensed sample, leave it out of Content ID. Your distributor will usually ask you this during upload. Here's the full explanation of Content ID and samples.

The alternative: samples that come cleared

All of the above is why I built Soul Sample Club. Every sound in the catalog is an original composition written and recorded for producers to sample, so there's nobody to track down and nothing to negotiate. Anything you download while you're a member is licensed to you for life, and that covers major label releases and sync too. You'll never owe us royalties or a credit.

From the catalog

LINKZ

Theme music to a getaway.

• SARANDE71 BPM · Bb Minor
• ULCER CITY67 BPM · E Minor
• MI HERMANO72 BPM · C Minor
• RUN MAN, RUN72 BPM · G Minor

Hear the full pack

So should you ever clear a sample?

Sometimes, yes. If a specific record is the whole point of the song, and the release is big enough to justify the fees and the share, clearing it properly is the right call. Plenty of classic records exist because someone did.

But for most producers, most of the time, the smarter move is to start from material that's already cleared, and save clearance for the rare record that truly needs one particular sample. You get to make music that can actually come out, without wondering whether a two-second loop is going to cost you a song.

If you want to hear what that sounds like, preview the whole catalog for free.