Sample Source Site WHOSAMPLED has Been Acquired by Spotify

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Can someone explain it to me like I’m 5yrs old.

Why do brehs/brehettes think this is bad?

Bad in two ways, primarily.

One, since Spotify has such a close relationship with the labels (for example, UMG and Sony own percentages of Spotify to this day), this could now essentially become a way to let the public do the research work for any songwriting and royalty claims they choose to pursue. While the likely majority of the music cited on WhoSampled is all cleared, a significant portion of it is not. Sometimes it's just a case of something slipping through the cracks, or a sample being so obscure or reworked that it isn't obvious on first listen. But could be especially rough is that since the goal of WhoSampled is to showcase any and all uses where a song was sampled, a lot of the songs they list out are older songs that aren't immediately recognizable as hits or even having samples, or songs from smaller artists that are maybe just starting out, or have plateaued. With this being a owned arm of a streaming partner to the labels, it's hard not to see a future where their data is used to pursue legal action.

And secondly, as it was before, since it wasn't affiliated with any specific streaming platform, the default was that songs were embedded as YouTube videos, both because it was easy to have a button that skips to the specific parts of the song that featured the sampled element, and because it was free to everyone. At worst, maybe you had to watch an ad or two. Now, the expectation is that users will be directed to sign up for Spotify, since they don't do free embeds of songs.
 
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Piff Perkins

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This right here.

People need to start paying attention to what's happening. It's going down quietly too. So if you're not downloading what you need and want now, you might regret that later.

I really only use streaming when I'm with my girl, who heavily uses Spotify. Outside of that I've got my physical copies (records, CDs, etc) and hard drives with shyt I've downloaded over the years. And every year I make sure to keep my zip/winrar/etc skills on point, finding all types of shyt online lol. Good thing about streaming price increases is that it has really bolstered pirating. It's easy to find random blogs or sites that still post links to new and old shyt. Hell, I found the OG Bulletproof Wallets a few weeks ago lol
 

Awesome Wells

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I really only use streaming when I'm with my girl, who heavily uses Spotify. Outside of that I've got my physical copies (records, CDs, etc) and hard drives with shyt I've downloaded over the years. And every year I make sure to keep my zip/winrar/etc skills on point, finding all types of shyt online lol. Good thing about streaming price increases is that it has really bolstered pirating. It's easy to find random blogs or sites that still post links to new and old shyt. Hell, I found the OG Bulletproof Wallets a few weeks ago lol

I definitely get that, bro.

I f*ck with Spotify, but usually only for the non-essentials that I already have on my phone. Or if I want to peep something I haven't heard yet. It's good for that. I still roll around with the million files that I kept on mad hard drives and all that. There's also a lot of music that I have that'll never hit the DSP's too. So I've just been keeping all these files forever. I was doing that on iPods before I just started throwing everything on my phone.

Those blogs are the sh*t! I find random ones all the time. Sometimes from other countries in other languages, but they still have mad heat! HAHA! I'm taking everything!
 

Motife43

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I fux with WhoSampled as a resource to discover older music. I hate that it’s sample snitching platform but it’s been dope to use. It sucks there’s a possibility we’ll lose out on all the mixtape, singles and uncleared samples

But I think the tech has caught up when it comes to sample ID and uncleared samples

I know YouTube is really on top of it. Back in 2011 when I had a music blog, I befriended this dude from the UK who would do piano covers of rap and R&B songs. His covers put me onto so many joints. We email once in a blue moon to catch up on music and life

Anyways, early 2024 he emailed me and told me he found out through the YT algorithm that one of his videos was using copyrighted material. It turns out a big rapper in the States sampled one of HIS piano solos. He emailed me and wasn’t sure what to do, I told breh GET THAT PAPER. He eventually worked out compensation and proper credit with the rapper’s team. He never would’ve known if the YT algorithm didn’t let him know. So in the future the sample snitches won’t necessarily be the humans lol
 

The Devil's Advocate

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Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven

Y'all think Spotify didn't have access to WhoSampled? You think Spotify doesn't have the legal paperwork or access to it for this stuff?

They been have listening AI to determine if you're stealing music...


This isn't the big deal you think it is... Who sampled is simply a website listing shyt that is already available. They will just funnel all their info, directly into their AI, and give you pop ups and related music because of it
 
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