The sampling continuum: musical aesthetics and ethics in the age of digital production

Behr, Adam, Negus, Keith and Street, John ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9650-063X (2017) The sampling continuum: musical aesthetics and ethics in the age of digital production. Journal for Cultural Research, 21 (3). pp. 223-240. ISSN 1479-7585

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Abstract

This article argues for a view of popular music production that better accounts for sampling than has historically been the case by viewing it as a continuum of activity. Weighing evidence from interviews with musical practitioners against the legal and industry frameworks we illustrate, first, how sampling has been legally differentiated from other types of musical copying. Secondly we show that, despite this, comparable ethical codes exist within and across musical methods wherein sampling is part of the spectrum of activities. Thirdly, we discuss the ubiquity of digital technology within popular music production and the resultant closer relationship between sampling and other musical techniques moving onto, fourthly, how the sampling aesthetic has become integrated into musical practice in a manner insufficiently accounted for by its legal and industrial contexts. This ‘post-sampling’ reality places sampling and other musical techniques along a spectrum, in practical and ethical terms, and musicians would be better served by sampling being treated as part of the overall musical palette, allowing both scholars and the law to concentrate on ideologies of practice across the tools that musicians use rather than between different specific techniques.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	copying,copyright,sampling,digitalization,popular music
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Political, Social and International Studies Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Cultural Politics, Communications & Media Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Policy & Politics Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Competition Policy
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	08 Jun 2017 05:07
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2023 09:45
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/63698
DOI:	10.1080/14797585.2017.1338277

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