Sampling audio

The word sampling, in the dance and electronic music world, has been used to describe the act of taking a snippet of a song and repurposing it in a new song. This technique has been used for a very, very long time, and since the beginning, it's been somewhat controversial. Taking a small section of a song and putting it in a new song sounds like it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but sometimes artists feel that as they have spent the time and resources to get the recording together for that little snippet, they deserve a piece of whatever profits the new song gets. Some sampling artists will argue that sampling actually provides more exposure to the artists they are sampling, declaring a 'rising tide floats all boats' kind of scenario.

Early sampling

Sampling music in the old dance music and hip-hop days was very primitive indeed. In one case, there was a song called Good Times by a band called Chic. The song was released in 1979, at the tail end of the...