écoute et répète 5

Listen and repeat



Several sampling cases were settled out of court before December of 1991, postponing the inevitable guidance a judicial decision would bring. Nonetheless, the publicity surrounding these cases made older artists hungry to cash in on the potential sampling licensing market. A song that had ceased bringing in royalties decades ago could suddenly yield a big check. In 1991 Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of the 1960s pop group the Turtles sued the rap trio De La Soul for using a twelve-second piece of the Turtles’ song “You Showed Me” in the 1989 rap track “Transmitting Live from Mars.” Volman and Kaylan sued for $2.5 million, but reached an out-of-court settlement for $1.7 million. De La Soul paid $141,666.67 per second to the Turtles for a sliver of a long-forgotten song. --more