Navigating the legal issues around covers and sampling requires an introduction. This article explains key questions in creating and using covers, and the meaning and principal forms of sampling.
What is a cover?
A cover is another artist’s version of an existing song, potentially with a personal style and interpretation. It may simply be a new performance, or change arrangement and melody so substantially that it becomes a new derivative work. Sometimes it surpasses the original’s popularity; without appropriate author permission, litigation may follow.
Three principal cover types: the extent of musical changes
The Copyright and Related Rights Act[1] supplies no definition. Practice ranges from another performer singing a familiar song to complete rearrangement or genre transformation[2]. No single legal classification works automatically; the relationship to the original must always be examined.
Following A. Sewerynik, three types can be distinguished[3]:
- Transcription: the song is unchanged but performed by others, perhaps adapting related instruments, such as electric for acoustic guitar or synthesiser for piano. This is simply a new artistic performance, without particular additional creativity.
- Creative instrumentation: melody, rhythm and harmony remain, but instrumentation changes creatively and individually beyond simple substitution. Conventional instruments might be replaced unconventionally by garage tools or a jet-ski engine. The scope for individual ideas is vast. Original instrumentation creates an adaptation, comparable to translating literature[4].
- Rearrangement: changing style, usually involving melody, rhythm, harmony and instruments. It may, but need not, create a derivative work. Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U is a creative example, differing from Prince’s R&B original in melody and its delicate, melancholic arrangement.
Artistic interpretation versus creative adaptation
Beyond technical classification, this distinction determines formalities. A new performance requires a licence for relevant uses. Distributing a creative adaptation additionally requires the original author’s permission. The original singer’s consent is unnecessary unless also the composer: there are no derivative rights in performances. A cover may imitate the singer or take another approach. If clearly referring to the original performer, personal rights set limits, for example with an insulting parody[5].
How can we distinguish them?
Interpretation changes dynamics, articulation or phrasing technically without altering individual character[6]. Anyone with appropriate musical expertise and skill could make those changes similarly. Fixed elements such as melody remain, although ornaments or vocalisations can enrich performance without creating an adaptation[7].
Changes only to tempo, phrasing, volume or sound production therefore do not create adaptations. Even changes within the composition need no extra author permission if technical or standard; an appropriate licence suffices[8].
An adaptation creatively and individually changes composition or lyrics substantially, creating a derivative work. Significantly changing melody or translating lyrics are examples.
Instrument changes are hardest to classify. Related electronic replacements for acoustic instruments are not creative, nor are other simple substitutions. Turning a metal-band composition into a string quartet arrangement, however, creates an adaptation.
Where authors died more than seventy years ago, neither licence nor adaptation permission is needed because the original is public domain, irrespective of creativity.
If a cover is not publicly exploited through streaming, YouTube, social media or concerts, nothing need be done. Creating adaptations alone requires no original-author consent[9].
For protected works, public use always requires a ZAiKS licence or one from another collective management organisation representing the author. ZAiKS provides a fee calculator[10].
Covers on YouTube: can their creators earn money?
Uploading also requires a licence for the underlying song. YouTube has an agreement with ZAiKS, which collects viewing royalties and pays authors. Rights holders can therefore earn from covers. Content ID informs them of new performances; they can request removal or monetise through adverts. This applies to Polish and foreign authors.
Creative adaptations additionally require direct author consent. ZAiKS can help supply contact details. The adapter may also earn royalties by registering the adaptation and obtaining original-author approval[11].
Sampling: meaning and types
Sampling incorporates parts of existing sound recordings into a new composition[12]. It involves digital recording, computer analysis and possible modification, then incorporation[13]. Sound itself functions like an instrument: a short isolated element becomes integral to the new work[14].
There are three principal types.
First, looping: repeating a short earlier passage. Called derivative works sampling, it uses one or a few recognisable samples significant quantitatively or qualitatively to both works[15]. An attentive listener can readily identify their origin. Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby[16] uses the bass motif from Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure. Taco Hemingway’s Może To Coś Zmieni[17], from 1-800-OŚWIECENIE, samples Edyta Bartosiewicz’s Jenny[18]. Modern sound and a familiar motif combine nostalgia with freshness.
Second, collage sampling: combining passages from several musical or sound sources into a new structure. Small, heavily modified excerpts may make originals unrecognisable, leaving little similarity. Effects, tempo and pitch changes offer broad freedom. Sources can include films or field recordings.
The Weeknd’s Secrets[19] samples Tears for Fears’ Pale Shelter[20] and the Romantics’ Talking in Your Sleep[21]. Variations become principal themes in a new structure, key and arrangement, while retaining the originals’ eighties new-wave feel.
Third, mash-up: combining two or more songs into a coherent composition[22], often using genre contrast and eclecticism. Like collage, it borrows recordings[23], but leaves them recognisable. Unlike looping, it uses much longer passages, with the result largely based on their sound. Numb/Encore[24] combines Linkin Park’s Numb and Jay-Z’s Encore.
Conclusion
- Distinguish interpretation from creative adaptation. Interpretation needs a use licence, whereas public exploitation of significant creative changes also needs author consent, for example substantial melody or harmony changes or translated lyrics.
- Sampling includes looping, collage and mash-ups, illustrated above.
- Next, I discuss sampling’s legal aspects and practical consequences, including prominent disputes such as Sabrina against Kraftwerk.
[1] Act of 4 February 1994 on copyright and related rights (consolidated text: Journal of Laws 2022, item 2509).
[2] https://legalnakultura.pl/pl/prawo-w-kulturze/prawo-w-praktyce/news/2864,covery-melodie-ktore-juz-znamy-kto-ma-do-nich-prawa#gsc.tab=0
[3] http://prawomuzyki.sewerynik.pl/2013/10/21/cover-a-prawa-autorskie/
[4] http://prawomuzyki.sewerynik.pl/2013/10/21/cover-a-prawa-autorskie/
[5] https://www.rp.pl/opinie-prawne/art2751421-cover-a-prawo-autorskie-w-praktyce
[6] https://akademia.zaiks.org.pl/wiedza/przerobki-remiksy-covery
[7] https://www.rp.pl/opinie-prawne/art2751421-cover-a-prawo-autorskie-w-praktyce
[8] https://www.rp.pl/opinie-prawne/art2751421-cover-a-prawo-autorskie-w-praktyce
[9] https://akademia.zaiks.org.pl/wiedza/przerobki-remiksy-covery
[10] https://online.zaiks.org.pl/oblicz-kup-licencje
[11] https://www.rp.pl/opinie-prawne/art2751421-cover-a-prawo-autorskie-w-praktyce.
[12] B.J. McGiverin, Digital Sound Sampling, Copyright and Publicity: Protecting Against the Electronic Appropriation of Sounds, „Columbia Law Review” 1987/87 (8), p. 1724, cited in J. Azran, Bring Back the Noise: How Cariou v. Prince Will Revitalize Sampling, „Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts” 2014/38, p. 71.
[13] R.M. Szymanski, Audio Pastiche: Digital Sampling, Intermediate Copying, Fair Use, „UCLA Entertainment
Law Review” 1996/3 (2), p. 275 (citing J.S. Newton, Digital Sampling: The Copyright Considerations
of a New Technological Use of Musical Performance, „Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law
Journal” 1989/11 (4), p. 671, 675).
[14] P. Juściński, Cyfrowy sampling utworów muzycznych w świetle prawa autorskiego i praw pokrewnych, ZNUJ. PPWI 2019, no. 1, p. 45-87.
[15] Ibid.
[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE
[17] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiCtKpSNwWU.
[18] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7wVNZ9JIf8
[19] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXDU9um19HM
[20] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUfcT5OoP-8
[21] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmGMzyajA2U
[22] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(muzyka)
[23] P. Juściński, Cyfrowy sampling utworów muzycznych w świetle prawa autorskiego i praw pokrewnych, ZNUJ. PPWI 2019, no. 1, p. 45-87.
[24] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLlF2FMv968.
