Okay, so here’s a challenge. If you upload to streaming, there’s multiple services and they all have different attitudes towards indie artists using celebrity work, and how the licensing is examined. DistroKid is really flexible with me, but it should work at most places as long as you can get a real human being who will read and reason with you. The challenge to be specific, is that these services are totally ready to accept a standard looking music license. That they can deal with. But you don’t have that… you have your argument, some web links, maybe the original magazine which I don’t have yet to buy but I’m about to….

…that’s a challenge in the music industry.

To make things complicated the industry is fraught with overly… I’m not sure how to say this but getting straight answers is hard. Most of my conversations I feel like I’m talking to someone who has a lawyer leaning over their shoulder telling them they just can’t answer directly.

But it can be done! (Big ups to Apoxode for doing the extra research that helped make this happen)

Steps to successfully publish Wired samples as features
1) Talk to your distributor and get them on page. Preferably through e-mail where you have a support ticket. While the support ticket is active, if the discussion is starting to go your way and or you get a green light, publish one of the songs.
2) Publish at least one track with one of the Wired samples as a feature. When challenged, reference the support ticket #!!!! The reason you do this is because the people who answered your e-mail and the people that verify might not even be in the same room. This makes them talk, and they can probably read the support ticket without even having to reach out to the other support people.
3) Use the previously published track and the canned response to streamline the process of publishing more tracks

I’ve got this down to a short form, a simple response. But what I did at first was reach out to my distributor and ask about working with. At first they were very confused, they’d apparently never heard of creative commons. Explain to them what it is, and how it works. Then examine what I’ve done here, and re-word this to fit your situation.

Remember to always be polite.
I can’t stress this enough. De-escalate and you will likely succeed!!

Remember you cannot do straight remixes. That is not covered under a Sampling+ license, please read it. You can do a remix if you “mash up” with another song and don’t use the original title. I’ve succeeded with that. And you can remix sounds into new tracks no problem. That fits “creatively transformed.”

Once you have that, all you need is a response to your distributor when they ask to verify your rights to feature the artist. At this point of time, I can flex on them with an edited version of this depending on what samples I’m using. And this response is getting me through.

Always feature the artist, it’ll boost your streams!!

—————- THE CANNED RESPONSE - edit to situation ——————

Thievery Corporate put samples into the creative commons that are legal to use for commercial purposes but attribution is require per the license. I have several tracks up using this license including one which references Thievery Corporation and I can provide ISRCs or DK UPCs if need be.

Thank you!

But to go over the authorization again… (and that’s okay)
It’s a creative commons sampling+ license that was made available, permanently, to the entire public, published through Wired Magazine, and recorded in records at Discogs, the title at discogs even says

“Wired: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.”

CeeLo Green appears’s on Danger Mouse’s submission to these tracks. By the rules of the license I must provide proper attribution wherever possible. Given that these are vocals, it is most appropriate to credit the artist as a feature. I have done so for previous releases through DistroKid and can list up those IRSCs if need be. The Sampling+ license allows for commercial publication as long as the work is mashed up or otherwise creatively transformed. And that track is a mash up, a combination of two songs under a separate title, in addition it has new instrumentation behind the acapella I used.

The most important part of this license other than it allows for commercial use is that it is permanent, once shared these songs cannot be taken out of creative commons. It’s different than public domain but similar in ways.

https://ccmixter.org/files/wired/77
https://www.wired.com/2004/11/sample/
https://www.discogs.com/release/341839-Various-Wired-Rip-Sample-Mash-Share
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/