Hi everyone! Hope you’re all enjoying reading break. I wanted to share this video I took last Friday night at an EDM concert. In the clip, Timmy Trumpet is sampling a song by David Guetta, which is in turn itself sampling a song by Eiffel 65. It reminded me of our discussion last class where we briefly mentioned how DJs and other EDM artists tend to be less litigious than other areas of the music industry. I know that the EDM community is pretty close knit and that Timmy Trumpet and David Guetta have definitely met, but I’m not sure if they’ve ever formally collaborated on anything together or if they have an agreement with sampling each other’s works.
Does anyone know if industry practice for EDM has its own internal copyright protections (like in stand up comedy) or if artists choose to keep their copyright unenforced for creative purposes? I think that U.S. copyright law has special rules surrounding covers of songs, but since this clip clearly uses the original vocals from David Guetta’s song, it should be subject to traditional copyright.
Communications Law