Sampling, Interpolation, and Stealing, What's the Difference?

Sampling, interpolation, and stealing, you’ve likely heard one of these terms before. All three of these terms are used in the music industry, and they all mean something different. We’re about to go through each and explain along the way!

The definition of sampling is, “The technique of digitally encoding music or sound and reusing it as part of a composition or recording.” But what does that mean? Well, to put it simply, sampling is the action of a producer or songwriter using a DIRECT (remember “direct”) cut from an artist's song and using it in their songs. Some examples of this would be Luther by SZA and Kendrick Lamar, sampling If This World Were Mine by Cheryl Lynn and Luther Vandross,  Chappell Roan’s Good Luck Babe’ sampling Spark’s Beat The Clock, and Jack Harlow’s First Class sampling Fergie’s Glamorous! Each of these artists had to go through a legal process to be allowed to sample, the original artist (or Copyright holder) gets royalties, meaning credit and a bit of the money that the song brings in. Sampling allows artists to bring up other artists by using an iconic song as an upcoming or more underground artist.

The definition of Interpolation is, “to re-record a melody, lyric, or musical phrase from an existing song into a new composition” Interpolation is when an artist RE-RECORDS a piece of another song to use in theirs, Interpolation is one artist recording another artists piece, it’s NOT DIRECTLY FROM THE ORIGINAL. An artist still has to go through the process of getting rights to use it and the copyright holder still gets royalties and credit. Some examples of interpolation would be Taylor Swift’s Actually Romantic which interpolates Where is My Mind by The Pixies, 5 Seconds of Summer’s Hey Everybody! Uses the guitar riff and melody of Duran Duran’s Hungry Like The Wolf, and Bon Jovi’s You Give Love A Bad Name interpolates If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man) by Bonnie Tyler.

Stealing is a little more self explanatory. Stealing (in music) is the act of using someone else’s song recording/writing in your song WITHOUT PERMISSION OR CREDITS, You may have also heard it called “Music Plagiarism". This can become a legal issue, this is called “Copyright Infringement". Most cases end in giving the copyright handler royalties. INSPIRATION IS NOT STEALING, you CAN be inspired by an artist and/or song, it becomes stealing when you rip off their music for your gain. The most popular example is Vanilla Ice stealing David Bowie and Queen’s bass riff from Under Pressure for his song Ice Ice Baby, only a single note added to his was different, it was settled in court. Some other examples are The Beach Boys song Surfin’ USA stole from Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen, and Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters stealing from I Want A New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News.