The last three decades have propelled us firmly into the post-sampling era, yet the music clearance process has remained stubbornly behind. Generally sitting somewhere between difficult to near impossible if you're an independent producer or songwriter.
The upshot is countless tracks left unreleased on the cutting room floor, and songwriters without potential royalties.
Tracklib is a new one-stop sampling service that aims to solve all that, removing the bureaucracy and expense from the music licensing equation. Launched today, Tracklib allows music makers to discover, purchase and license original tracks (as opposed to purpose-built sample packs or loops) for public release.
The Swedish startup boasts Questlove, Statik Selectah, Prince Paul and Erick Sermon among its fans, as well entertainment executive heavyweight Tom Silverman:
"The nightmare of music sampling is finally over," says Silverman. "We have emerged from the dark ages of the music industry and instead of discouraging and suppressing sampling, we can now encourage new creators to quickly and easily use parts of original recordings to make exciting new music."
Tracklib is free to sign up and offers different pricing tiers depending on the track and length of your sample (you can buy the track for $1.99, with clearance starting at $50).
See how it works below or visit Tracklib's website to find out more.