Q. I’ve heard songs by everyone from Peter Gabriel to Steely Dan sampled in rap hits. Do the original artists get any money when their songs are sampled?
A. When rap artists such as Public Enemy and Salt-N-Pepa began incorporating portions of James Brown’s work into their own songs in the mid-’80s, there were no laws that protected artists from being “sampled.” That would soon change. Roy Orbison’s estate was among those to take action, suing 2 Live Crew for its use of “Pretty Woman” in the early 1990s. Some artists, such as Stevie Wonder and Sly & The Family Stone, have prohibited rappers from sampling their work at all.
Some artists have taken a different approach, agreeing to have their work sampled–often for a hefty price. Deals can be brokered for everything from a flat fee for the sample to co-writing credits and royalties for the “new” song. Sting reportedly got more than $1 million and royalties for allowing Puff Daddy to sample the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” for Puffy’s “I’ll Be Missing You” single, which sold three million copies. Sample that.