Related to sampling, are the terms replay and interpolation. Where sampling took from the composition and the sound recording, replay wants to not take the sound recording. What you want to replay is the melody, for example, that was in a sound recording, not copy it, not sample it. So replay and interpolation mean the same thing. They're use interchangeably. So what replay an interpolation do, they will always certainly avoid the problem of sampling, because instead of sampling the music, you're going to re-perform the music. It's less of an issue. You're not involve anymore with taking two copyrights. You're taking the composition copyright but not the sound recording copyright. Legally, it's less serious in some ways. To give an example of an interpolation, a replay causing a problem, Michael Jackson's first song on Thriller is called Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'. The last 89 seconds of it, which is lime in half, you hear him and background singers musicians they're saying ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma coo sa, and they say that over and over and over. That may be 39 statements of it. If you didn't know where it is from it well, it's Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'. However, it's from an African artist from Cameroon named Manu Dibango. His song Soul Makossa which was a hit in 1979, it's well-known song. I think what Michael Jackson wanted to do is take the snippet of it, just take a little portion of it and repeat it over and over. So he didn't sample it. What he did was re-perform it. He played it over and over. Again, it was I think 39 or so statements of ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa, and he did that often, he did not ask permission. Manu Dibango as you'd would expect did sue and did win. If you're going to take something from someone else, he's not taking the sound recording so that part's good, that's less of a problem. But if you're going to take someone's portion of their composition, it's best to limit it maybe in the realm of fair use. It could be much much shorter, and said repeated 39 times maybe twice there's something different. With that same song, Soul Makossa and ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa, the Black Eyed Peas wanted to throw just that line into a song of theirs called Clap Your Hands. It was so brief, it was ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa. They even said it differently, they articulated it, they stretched it out a bit. It was a lot different than Manu Dibango's version or Michael Jackson's. Where Michael Jackson did it 39 times and denies ask for permission, the Black Eyed Peas just did it once. It takes place over four seconds or so of music, and they did ask permission and got permission to use it from the publisher and paid for it. They had to ask permission because they were saying, we don't want to get in the trouble Michael Jackson did, or they're paying tribute to Manu Dibango, because really it could've been easily considered fair use. Because they just stated the phrase once and stated it differently. They gave transformative value to it, but it's one of those things that people have to decide. You want to try going fair use and not ask permission for a very brief excerpt. Do you want to risk a potential lawsuit, or do you want to ask permission? But that's an important way of looking at the differences using it 39 times without permission, using it once with permission.
