You rarely hear anyone cover the Beastie Boys. Is it because their songs rely so much on samples that they’re impossible to recreate legally without making a profit? How did they not get sued into oblivion with hundreds of samples used? Where do those royalties go today?

  • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 day ago

    The Beatles thing is a myth. Nobody connected to the Beatles has sued anybody over Paul’s Boutique. Most of the samples on Pauls’ Boutique were cleared, especially the most obvious ones.

    https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/pop-hiss/story/2012-05-10/beastie-boys-sampling-in-pauls-boutique-again-in-spotlight

    He adds that there are two myths about the samples and licensing on the Beastie Boys’ classic. One is that when the record was first released, neither the group nor its label, Capitol, had cleared any of the rights to the snippets of recordings that they and producers the Dust Brothers used. ‘They and their label were really cautious. They cleared tons of songs,’ McLeod says, citing the ballpark $250,000 figure that’s often reported, and the fact that the Jimmy Castor Bunch had sued the group soon after ‘Licensed to Ill’ was released.