Glitch Magic

Will Using Free Sample Packs Get Your Music Taken Down?

Are free sample packs safe to use for a professional producers? Or hobby producers who would like to become professionals?

The short answer is: it depends!

On what you ask? What kind of music maker you are and and what kind of samples you use.

Believe it or not sounds like drum kits or percussion loops are not treated the same as melodic loops.

Free sample packs are basically everywhere on the internet.

However, whether or not they are going to get your music taken down, get you sued, mess up a professional relationship, or cause you to lose money (or just not have fun) in the future largely depends on what your goals are.

Where you release music and whether or not you have professional goals or you're just doing it for fun also matter!

In this article we're going to cover a few different cases and the overall state of the space right now. Then, you can make an informed choice for yourself.

The major users of free sample packs more or less fit into four categories. There will definitely be some overlap between them. Be sure to keep their motivations in mind as we explore the world of free samples. Also, don't forget to ask yourself which type of music maker you are.

It will be a help so you can make sure you source your sounds intentionally. And make sure you don't have problems in the future.

Where Can I Find Free Sample Packs?

Don't feel like reading anymore and just want a free sample pack or two from us? Here you go:

FREE (OR CHEAP) STUFF IS HERE

Ok, got the free stuff? Now let's get into the meat and potatoes here.

The 4 Kinds Of Musicians Using Free Sample Packs

The Hobbyist

The Hobbyist is the music producer strictly in it for the culture. They don't have any plans to make a living in music.

It's all about doing it just to do it, have fun, and share music with their community.

This type of music producer isn't in danger of losing money for the most part.

But they're going to be upset if they can't make and share their music freely because that is why they do it.

The Weekend Warrior

The Weekend Warrior is a rung up from The Hobbyist. These are people who have a day job or business doing something outside their music productions. Or maybe they have another job in music like teaching.

Music production isn't their full time income, but its not zero either.

Sync Music Producer

A Sync Producer might also work on artist projects, release their own productions, maybe even make paid packs for audio companies. However, the main thing they're involved in is creating tracks for use in other kinds of media like TV, Film, and Video Games.

They aren't as concerned with uploading music to places like YouTube or even Spotify. However, they need a lot of royalty free sounds to avoid legal problems.

More importantly, they need to be careful about messing up a business relationship. Their creative director or music supervisor contacts are extremely important.

Therefore, the free sample pack that turns out to have pirated sounds from a record is going to be a big problem for them!

The Artist

The Artist is someone releasing albums or singles of music for the sake of making a creative statement and building a fan base. Sure, going after sync opportunities is a priority. But it is not the main one.

The primary focus is making music that their fans will love, have access to, and that they can monetize.

In many ways, The Artist is the type of musician with the most overlap with the others at all stages of their career.

The State of Free Sample Packs In 2023

There are a few "traditional" sources of free samples right now and one emerging one that are worth talking about. We're going to talk on the pros and cons of each sources. We will also cover alternatives as well as some of the other big points to consider.

Samples From Your Records

No this is not a "sample pack" in the usual sense. But we want to touch on this because the culture of people sampling sounds straight from records or YouTube videos is still very much alive and well.

Entire genres of music like hip hop are built on it.

Certain types of music production rely on specific drum loops like the Amen break. You hear this in Jungle as well as Drum and Bass.

I Don't Care! You Can't Stop Me From Sampling!

If you're just making music for fun, go for it. However, if you decide to to upload your tracks or have professional ambitions, be careful.

This can be one of the most expensive sources of samples in the long run.

You might have to pay to clear samples for use if your music starts to pick up momentum professionally, which can get very expensive. For example, Danny Brown spent $70K on clearing samples for his record Atrocity Exhibition.

If you plan to pitch your music for sync opportunities in movies, TV, or games, we would avoid sampling from records entirely.

Because even if you can get a sample cleared, that process is often slow. And this lag time can cause a deal to fall apart very easily. Unfortunately, this results in you losing money.

Public Domain Sounds - A Great Resource

Public domain sources of audio are a convenient, completely free places to dig for sound effects or strange, hard to define sounds that you can chop up into loops or percussion sounds. You just need to be 100% sure they are actually public domain and that won't change anytime in the future.

A good example is the NASA free collection of space sounds or the BBC Sound Effects Library which is a whole site dedicated to sharing royalty free sounds with the public.

A common mistake people make in this area is sampling compositions that are public domain, like a piece of classical music, but they sample from a recording that is not public domain. For example, The Magic Flute by Mozart is in the public domain because it is an old piece of music, but modern recordings of it are not!

Sample Pack Companies

This is places like this website! Glitch Magic is one of many audio companies that makes royalty free collections of one shots, melodic loops, drum one shots, and many other types of samples that people can use in their productions.

And a crucial ingredient to this is recording our own sounds for everything. When we want to put together a new sample pack, our general process is to come up with a theme, record our synths, drums, keys, make presets, then cut up loops or one shot samples into WAV files you can browse when you need fresh ideas in the studio.

Common Problems With Free Sample Packs

One thing to watch out for—when you download free samples from a legit company or even paid sound packs, some companies put sneaky things in their terms and conditions for the purpose of collecting royalties if their sounds are used in a very popular song. Glitch Magic does not do this!

If you use our sounds we don't want your royalties, we just want to see our sounds used in quality music.

We always recommend you read the fine print when dealing with other companies. There is one very popular and common sample pack marketplace that rhymes with "Rice" that we've heard of sync music producers having problems with in the department.

Forums and Friends

The Hobbyist can go nuts swapping sounds with friends or downloading that free sample pack you found on a forum somewhere. But be mindful of the fact that when you share this music on platforms like YouTube or Spotify, the rules can change at anytime.

For example, Bandcamp tolerated people using copyrighted sounds on their platform for a long time, but they've begun to crack down since they were bought out by Epic Games.

Platforms like YouTube and Spotify are specifically developing AI to scan uploaded songs for use of copyrighted melodic loops.

Speaking of AI..

AI

This is a whole new category of sample creation. Basically the way this works is with a very very large set of samples, you can use software to generate or composite sounds similar to things in the set of training data.

If you give the AI only sounds of snare drums, that's all it can make. It can't make synth sounds, at least not on its own.

What Samples Are Best To Make Myself?

Sounds like free lunch right? Just use AI to generate unlimited sample packs based on copyrighted material and you're good to go right? Not so fast. Audio watermarking exists and AI checking software can often determine if a piece of media came from AI software, including audio and text (we promise this blog was written by humans but you can check if you like :)

Our recommendation for music producers with a financial interest in not getting sued is to learn the AI, but don't build your whole workflow around AI generated sounds. The field is moving super fast and legally it's tough to say right now how copyright laws will apply to AI content. Technically speaking it IS a derivative work. You can't make AI sounds without training data that has to come from humans.

So we recommend especially for drum loops or melody loops. Either make them yourself or use trusted sources. AI audio content is still too much of a legal gray area.