The recent raids on Asian distributors by the BPI (click here to view full details) in reference to DJ Sanj's 'Authorised' album (click here to read album review) have prompted me to write this article. Sampling has always been common place in the bhangra scene and, if anything, it has become even more rife in recent times, with the BPI estimating piracy within the desi scene at a shocking 40% of all releases which is ludicrous when you consider the overall UK piracy rate which is less than 5%. So when can sampling be justified? The biggest bhangra tune of all time is without doubt Panjabi Mc's 'Mundian To Bach Ke' track; it used the 'Knight Rider' beat from the TV programme. It's creative to a certain extent, as it's not taken from the biggest hip-hop tune and the way it has been put together against hard-core desi vocals is simply amazing. The more obscure the sample and how extensively it's been altered, increases the level of overall creativity applied in my view.

Flipping the script and looking at the blatant side of sampling, then all you have to do is listen to the RDB produced track featuring Manak-E's vocals entitled 'Paisa', which takes the beat of Ushers 'Yeah' but then to add insult to injury they even decided to keep Lil John's vocals from the original. Some people would refer to this practice, as taking the biscuit but that is being polite a much better way to describe it would be to call it 'taking the packet.' This is just one example I could go on and on… highlighting the rip-off merchants. It's a fine line judging between what's creative sample and simple jacking next man's beats; each and every person's opinion varies on this. Having said this, I don't care who you are, or what your individual viewpoint is but to blatantly sample and then selling it on a CD, without the prior consent of the owner, is stealing!

Releasing US style Mixtapes, which is becoming a bit of a trend on the desi scene, is cool, as long as you are not directly profiting from it, as far as I'm concerned. Examples of this include Mentor Kolektiv's Mixtape Volume 1 (click here to view album review) and The Sona Family's 100 Rupees Mixtape (click here to view album review). As well as this if you want to get radio airplay to push your name or put up free mp3 downloads on your website then it's all good again. These methods are ways of helping new artists push their name without having to take the risk of spending a lot of money putting out an album. The big issue here is a five-letter word called MONEY. If it's involved, then it's illegal and there can be very serious implications.

Mentor Kolektiv Mixtape

Original producers from within the scene have become increasingly frustrated with the sample-based music. Mukhtar Sahota in his interview with us (click here to view) said 'Everything that's coming out of Envy is sample based, I used to go into the Envy studios and they had this blackboard which had an Envy artist on one side and next to it would be Foxy Brown. It was that blatant.' Lyrical Rider of Illegal Demo in his interview with us (click here to view) said 'what the fu** ya doin pissin? I mean everyone can make tracks like this' and he goes on to talk about the common use of a program called 'Acid Pro' which in his words 'It's like nick a bit of this track, nick a bit of vocals and you've got a track. With it you can listen to how it would sound before you even paste the sample. So what people do is get three / four tracks and see which sound better.'

Why are desi artist making these comments? Well, the desi scene is becoming increasingly saturated with mediocre 'sample' based albums, which theoretically take a lot less time and effort whilst at the same time cost less money to put together thus giving them an unfair advantage. It's like Jat of The Kray Twinz said in their interview with us (click here to view) 'They [Asian Labels] are the same as usual - putting out 3 albums a week from every dj and bedroom producer they can find.' The Asian market is still a niche market and has well and truly reached saturation point in terms of number of releases. It's no coincidence that the labels that release over-sampled junk manage to bang out releases for fun while the real desi artists slave away for up to 2 years before putting an album on the market. There is some damn good original stuff coming out of the Asian scene but you have to do a whole lot of sh** shovelling to find it. I mean every time I try to talk up bhangra to non desi's they more often than not dismiss us as a bunch of glorified bootleggers and the worst thing is that I have no response as it's so true. How we are perceived in the mainstream may be pretty trivial to many but they are spoiling it for the others who genuinely have the desire and ability to follow in the footsteps of Panjabi Mc.

Desi artists have been ripping of the mainstream for years but only now have the BPI done anything about it. For years one of the arguments has been 'why does the mainstream even care what's happening in the little old Asian music scene.' Well I'll tell you what's different now! Since Panjabi Mc crossed over into the mainstream with 'Mundian To Bach Ke' many others such as Jay Sean, Raghav, Rishi Rich and Juggy D have released Asian influenced music in the mainstream. What I am trying to say is the Asian scene is no longer totally underground. Our music is now sold in HMV / Virgin and our videos are being aired on Channel U and MTV Base.

Urban Explosion

Major mainstream labels have also been releasing Asian compilations such as Urban Explosion (Sony), Desi Beats Volume 1 (Def Jam UK) and Asian Beat Bazaar (Virgin). The desi tracks featured on these compilation are sample free which just goes to show that we can create good quality music without jacking beats from the mainstream. It's strange that Asian labels can take money from the mainstream labels for licensing these tracks to them yet at the same time some of the desi albums from which these non-sampled tracks are taken from are littered with samples e.g. RDB feat Gubi Sandhu track 'Dil Karda' features on the Urban Explosion compilation album

but the original album (Urban Flavas) from which it is taken has several samples (click here to view album review). I'm sorry lads but you can't have it both ways; you can't be part of the mainstream one minute and pretend to be underground the next. Once you've cashed that cheque you are asking for trouble… and trust me there is trouble ahead.

Another common saying within the Asian scene, we love to talk innit, is 'the so-called big mainstream labels won't sue as the costs involved will exceed the likely damages awarded' and if you do the maths then this is true. However the latest unprecedented move by the BPI (which involved highly organised raids of leading Asian distributors) to pull the DJ Sanj album 'Authorised' (click here to view album review) out of distribution could have major consequences on many desi labels. What if they start raiding shops? Potentially they can walk into shops and confiscate in excess of half the stock in the shop; it's sad I know, but that is the extent of the problem. So should the labels be worried? Damn right they should be! It's a guessing game to figure out the next step of the BPI is but the initial steps taken by them show that they mean action. As well as this, I firmly believe that it's only a matter of time before someone will sue a desi label even if it's more on principal rather than financial reward.

Lets switch things to the other way around and talk about the mainstream sampling desi music. This instantly bring back memories for me of my trip to USA back in the summer of 2002, when I was shopping in Footlocker on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, New York and with a shop full of people and I heard the vocals of Lata Mangeshkar and I was like 'woah…whats going on here?' The track playing was called 'Addictive' and it not only illegally borrowed the vocals but the hook, melody and rhythm were also lifted from the 20-year-old movie 'Jyoti.' Saregama music, the owner of the initial recording attempted to sue Interscope Records and its parent company, Universal Music Group to the tune of more than $500 million based on the significant sales of the single and the album, which the track also featured on, called 'Truth Hurts.' An undisclosed settlement was reached by all parties, which one can imagine would be a massive amount.

The costs involved were immense and a harsh lesson was learned by the mainstream that Asian music is not free and you can't pick and choose what you want. So did they learn from this glaring error in judgement? Oh yeah! Samples of Indian music continue to be used but now they are fully licensing them through the Asian companies. An example of this from my CD collection is Mark B's 'Move…Now', which uses a sample from the track 'Jab Chaye' performed by Asha Bhosle that has been licensed by Saregama (which is ironically the same label that sued for the use of the Addictive sample). Various desi vocalists are making guest appearances on mainstream tracks e.g. DES-C on the side B remix of Jon B's 'Lately.' Strange as this may sound but it's probably the 'Addictive' track, which probably kick-started the mainstreams current fascination with desi sounds.

Now lets give you the full low-down on the copyright laws if you don't already know them. Copyright subsists in sound recordings, and in the music and lyrics to a song, pursuant to section 1(1) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). The CDPA provides in section 16(1) that the owner of a work has a number of acts restricted to him or her, which are to:

Therefore, any kind of sampling without the consent of the copyright owner will prima-facie amount to infringement. In both the UK and the USA there is an instant copyright infringement or violation when a song is sampled without permission, as this constitutes the unauthorised use of copyrighted material owned by another. To be clear, sampling without permission will usually violate two copyrights - in the sound recording copyright (usually owned by an artist or their record company) and the copyright in the song itself (usually owned by the songwriter or their music publishing company). In order for another party to carry out any of these activities, they must first gain consent from the original copyright owner or their agent - such as the UK collection societies (the Performing Right Society, Phonographic Performance Limited and British Phonographic Industry), which manage copyrights on behalf of copyright owners. Just remember ignorance of the law does NOT make one exempt.

So my next question is why don't Asian labels license samples the same way the mainstream does? The process is simple: You have to send them the completed track and wait for a response from the legal owner, which realistically can take months. Firstly they have to like the way you have used the sample; if they dislike it then you get a simple 'No' you can't use it. Let say they like it for arguments sake - they then ask for an advance payment for use of the sample and/or a royalty percentage on all the monies earned from selling the track. Ninder Johal (MD of Nachural Records) who is one of the few to have gone through with the process when he licensed the 'Knight Rider' sample on

PMC - Mundian To Bach Ke

the mainstream release of 'Mundian To Bach Ke.' He tells me that it took a mammoth four months of legal wrangling to finally reach an agreement but potentially it can take a lot longer.

Steve of Trickbaby is another who officially cleared the use of samples on their album as he said in his interview with us (click here to view) that 'if a sample is good then we'll use it, but samples are expensive as we found out.' The big problem with some of the unauthorized sampling in the desi scene is they rip of the biggest hip-hop joints, which realistically to license one sample would easily exceed the entire budget on the album. The funny thing is desi artists manage to 'sample' and release tracks while they are still the 'Top 40' and fresh in the minds of the desi youth which just goes to show the minimal time and effort needed to put such tracks together. There is absolutely no way a major label would license a sample while the original track from which it's taken is still hot property. The waiting time is also big 'No No' for the desi labels as the time it takes to clear all the samples on one album they would want to release half a dozen albums.

So who is to blame for sampling in the desi scene? Artists? Labels? Distributors? Duplicators? I think everyone has to take a slice of blame. The Artist is obviously to blame as they will be the ones who have put the sample on the track. An interesting fact about some Asian labels make their artists sign contracts which state something along the lines of 'the artist is solely to blame for any sample use' which incidentally is common in mainstream contracts. Some of the labels subsequently deliberately allow their artists to rinse samples blindly thinking they can 'pass the book' as it where as the artist in question has signed a contract accepting responsibility. Then, you've got some label bosses who genuinely don't listen to hip-hop and wouldn't be able to pick up on the sampling. The problem here is they love to have their names in bold as the 'Executive Producer' of the album but they are not actively doing their job. If they don't listen to certain styles of music then they should go to the effort of getting the music listened to by a few people that do before actually pressing the CD's; is that too much to ask for?

There are instances where artists are producing music on a 'Ghar Di Gal' style agreement, where a contract is non-existent and the artist in question usually gets paid 'didly squat' and in such instances the labels will have to take the hit 100%. Ghost productions is increasingly rife in the desi music scene which, for those that don't know what it is, it's when you get some next producer, who is usually signed to another label, to do all your work for you and take all the credit in return for some cash-in-hand. This will become a grey area, as the puppet producers will be solely responsible for any samples used. So theoretically they should be a reduction in the lowly activity, which is a good thing, as I've never understood how someone can front another artists work; shame on you. You've also got the distributors who were the initial target of the BPI in the raids and they will have been made aware of their responsibilities. Even the duplicators who press the CD's have been made aware of the role they play and told to keep an eagle eye out for the sample specialists.

Is this the beginning of the end of the desi music industry or a blessing in disguise? I most definitely think it's the latter! I don't care what people say but bhangra still sells; it's just the fact that so many albums come out and you can only slice the cake so many times… it's got to the stage where you are left with the crumbs only. The labels are competing on quantity of releases rather than quality to make the overall financial return viable. I really hope the number of bhangra releases is reduced because of this, as the current philosophy of most of the labels is to 'Jew' as many tenners out of the unsuspecting customer as you possible can. The worst thing is they have resorted to using alias producer and label names to put out their lesser material in order to not give themselves a bad name and as a bhangra fan it really saddens me to see people knowingly making a mockery of our industry. It's now time for the real producers who can actually make their own beats to take centre stage. A message for all you so-called producers who consistently make a habit of jacking beats 'don't give up the day job' and if making music is that job…then it's time to give the Job Centre a visit…but don't expect a reference from your last employer.