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Kanye West Scavenged for Samples on ‘Vultures.’ Should He Have Been Allowed To?

Kanye's "Vultures" album samples show music's song clearance problem. How can the industry solve the issue for the future?

This is an extreme example of what seems like a general trend, as is the Travis Scott album Utopia which Billboard recently reported has its own issues with songwriting credits and royalty splits. Here, too, Scott’s collaborators could sue — although this would be a foolish move since many of them depend on his star power to market their work and the nature of streaming blunts potential legal threats. The same kind of pressure doesn’t apply to publishers that control interpolation rights for older songs, but it’s important to remember that this money, too, goes to creators — often on better terms than streaming revenue does.

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