American sampling law is three court decisions and a business model, and none of them were written with the producer in mind. Grand Upright ended the free-sample era in 1991. Bridgeport made even a two-second lift actionable in 2005. VMG Salsoul disagreed in 2016 and left the country with two sets of rules depending on which federal circuit you get sued in. What has not changed in thirty-five years is who holds the leverage when a Black producer wants to use a Black record: the publisher and the label, usually neither of which is the artist who played on it.
Grand Upright: "Thou shalt not steal"
Biz Markie's "Alone Again" looped Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1972 "Alone Again (Naturally)." Warner had asked for clearance and been refused, then released the record anyway. Judge Kevin Duffy of the Southern District of New York opened his opinion with "Thou shalt not steal," granted a preliminary injunction, and referred the case to the U.S. Attorney for possible criminal prosecution, as the copyright bar at Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman recounted after Biz's death in 2021. The opinion, 780 F. Supp. 182 (S.D.N.Y. 1991), is short and contains almost no analysis of what sampling is. No charges were ever filed. The album that followed was titled All Samples Cleared!, and the industry took the joke as policy: from 1992 on, every major-label sample got a license or got pulled.
The practical effect landed hardest on the collage style. Paul's Boutique and 3 Feet High and Rising were built from dozens of uncleared fragments each. After Duffy, that method priced itself out of existence at the major-label level.
Bridgeport: two seconds is enough
N.W.A's 1990 "100 Miles and Runnin'" used a two-second, three-note guitar figure from Funkadelic's "Get Off Your Ass and Jam," pitched down and looped into a 16-beat passage that appears five times. The song turned up in No Limit's 1998 film I Got the Hook Up, and Bridgeport Music, which controls much of George Clinton's catalog, sued. The district court called the sample de minimis in 2002. The Sixth Circuit reversed, and the final opinion on June 3, 2005 delivered the line every producer has heard since: "Get a license or do not sample," per the GWU Music Copyright Infringement Resource summary of 410 F.3d 792.
The reasoning is the key detail. The court distinguished the sound recording copyright from the composition copyright. For a composition, a tiny borrowing can still be de minimis. For a recording, the Sixth Circuit said any physical copying infringes, because you took the actual sound rather than re-creating it. Under Bridgeport, replaying the riff with your own guitarist is legal; lifting 0.2 seconds of the original is not.
VMG Salsoul: the Ninth Circuit says no
In 2016 the Ninth Circuit looked at a 0.23-second horn hit from the Salsoul Orchestra's "Love Break" in Madonna's "Vogue" and ruled the opposite way: the de minimis doctrine applies to sound recordings, and a fragment that short is not infringement. The majority called Bridgeport's reasoning unpersuasive. Judge Silverman's dissent argued the bright line was "easy and efficient to interpret" and warned that the new fuzzy test would burden courts.
So the map matters. Get sued in Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky or Michigan and Bridgeport controls. Get sued in California and Salsoul controls. Everywhere else, district judges pick. Labels, which distribute nationally, plan for the strictest rule. That means the practical standard in 2026 is still Bridgeport.
What clearing a loop costs now
Two rights, two negotiations. The master (the recording) belongs to the label. The publishing (the composition) belongs to the publisher, usually split among several writers. Both can say no, and both can demand a percentage of the new song rather than a flat fee. That is why an uncleared sample on a hit is a career-altering event: a publisher can take a majority of the writing on a record you produced.
Platforms have tried to make the market rational. Tracklib, founded in Stockholm in 2014 and public since 2018, pre-negotiates with labels and publishers and sells samples in tiered categories with the clearance cost attached. J. Cole's "Middle Child" was cleared there. Sony put $4.5 million into the company in 2020. It is a real fix for one slice of the catalog, and a reminder that the catalog most producers actually want, 1970s soul and funk, is largely owned by three majors and a handful of independent publishers who can still price a clearance however they choose.
The take
Every landmark case here involves Black music. Biz Markie was the defendant. George Clinton's catalog was the plaintiff's asset, controlled by a company Clinton spent years fighting. The Salsoul Orchestra were session players on a disco label. In no case did the ruling create a right for the musician who played the original part to be paid when a producer built something new from it. The law protects the owner of the recording, and the owner is almost never the drummer.
Producers should know the map: Bridgeport in the Sixth Circuit, Salsoul in the Ninth, the majors planning for Bridgeport everywhere. Clear the master, clear the publishing, get the split in writing before the record is out. And keep pushing for the reform nobody in Washington has proposed: a compulsory license for samples, with the money routed to the players.
Sources
- "All Samples Cleared!" Remembering Biz Markie's Contributions to Copyright Law — Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, August 17, 2021
- Grand Upright Music v. Warner Bros. Records, 780 F. Supp. 182 — Justia, S.D.N.Y. 1991
- Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films, et al. — GWU Music Copyright Infringement Resource, accessed September 2026
- VMG Salsoul v Ciccone — Wikipedia, accessed September 2026
- Tracklib — Wikipedia, accessed September 2026