Questlove outlines crucial flaws in the sampling system that almost ensure musicians and their catalogs get ripped off.

Earlier this week, a Los Angeles Times report detailed the account of Eddie Johns, a disco-era singer and musician who claimed he’d yet to receive any royalties from, being sampled on the 2000 Daft Punk single, “One More Time.”

The story, which dove into the hard times Johns had fallen upon in the decades since he released “More Spell On You” (the song sampled on the French duo’s breakout single,) and how his catalog was acquired by a French label larger than the one he’d released his lone album on, was almost instantly picked up by a number of music outlets (including ours.) But much like the original LA Times piece, none of the subsequent reporting on the mishandling of Johns’ check(s) was able to determine how and why Johns’ catalog, like those of countless musicians, was severed from its creator so completely that it took 20 years and a major publication’s story to bring the oversight to the attention of the label currently administrating the rights to Johns’ music.

If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. And to get to the bottom of it, you need either a juris doctor in licensing and publishing or a cool thirty years of submitting and overseeing sample clearances. Questlove, as it happens, falls squarely in the latter category. And the Roots drummer’s take on the controversy surrounding Johns and Daft Punk’s dispute comes with an outline of the crucial flaws in the sampling system that almost ensure musicians and their catalogs get ripped off. In a lengthy Twitter thread posted on Friday, Questlove broke down how licensing and publishing administration is filled with opportunistic middlemen that hawk prospective catalog acquisitions from small regional labels. “The real culprit in the sampling controversy always lies with the invisible middlemen who acquire (sometimes legally) dormant catalogues that are up for grabs,” Questo writes.

I get the sentiment of the story but it’s also slanted: https://t.co/RQaWPLkR6T it’s making it like Daft Punk just robbed a homeless musician for naught. It also reinforces the stereotype that sampling isn’t an art or this pillage act in which acts don’t pay to sample

— B.R.O.theR. ?uestion (@questlove) May 7, 2021

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