Sample clearance protects the sample you cleared. It does nothing for a claim over the part you wrote yourself — and that defence rests on proving what your session held before you heard the other record.
Every recorded song carries two separate copyrights. The composition covers the melody, harmony, and lyrics, and is controlled by the songwriters and their publishers. The sound recording, or master, covers the specific recorded performance, and is usually controlled by the artist or the label.
The distinction governs what clearance you need. Sampling lifts audio from the original recording, so it requires permission from both owners: the master and the composition. An interpolation re-records the part rather than lifting it, so under US law it generally requires composition clearance only, because the rights in a sound recording do not extend to independently recorded sound-alikes. One negotiation instead of two, which is why interpolation has become the more common route. Sampling and interpolation therefore carry different clearance burdens, but they share the same blind spot.
What neither form of clearance does is protect the rest of the record. Clearance is permission for a defined use of a defined work. It says nothing about the drums you programmed, the topline you wrote, or the chord movement you arrived at yourself. When a claim arrives over one of those, the licence in your file is irrelevant, because the claim is not about the part you licensed.
That is the exposure most producers never plan against. The cleared sample is documented. The original material — the part that is your own work — usually is not.
The asymmetry is worth sitting with, because the consequences run in one direction. Clearance is negotiated before release, at a price you can evaluate and decline. An infringement claim arrives after release, when the record is earning, when a label or distributor may hold rights to withhold, and when statutory damages in the United States reach $150,000 per work for wilful infringement. Audio fingerprinting has also closed the detection gap: uncleared material is now identified routinely and early, often before a record charts. The economics reward documenting the material you did not license at least as much as the material you did.
A music copyright claim does not require the claimant to prove you copied. It requires them to establish ownership of a valid copyright and copying by you, and because direct evidence of copying is rare, courts allow copying to be inferred circumstantially: that you had access to the work, and that the two works are substantially similar.
Access is easier to establish than it once used to be — and easier still where a demo has circulated. Streaming, social platforms, and demo-sharing services generate records of who heard what and when. Where a work was widely available, or was sent to a label, a manager, or a producer you also worked with, a claimant can build an access argument from documents that already exist.
Substantial similarity is a question of fact, and in music it is frequently unsuitable for summary judgment, which means the case does not end early. Once access and substantial similarity are established, a presumption of copying arises — and the burden shifts to you.
The defence at that point is independent creation. If you can prove you wrote the material yourself, without reference to the claimant's work, there is no infringement, however similar the two records sound. Courts have been explicit that identical expression does not necessarily constitute infringement where independent creation is established. It is a complete answer to the claim.
The burden-shifting matters more than it sounds. A claimant who establishes access and substantial similarity does not win — but they move the case to a position where the producer must affirmatively account for how the work was made. If the producer introduces evidence of independent creation, the burden shifts back to the claimant to prove actual copying with significant probative evidence. The strength of the producer's evidence therefore determines not just whether the defence succeeds but whether the case ends early or runs for years.
The question is what proving it takes in practice.
The defence is not a statement. It is an evidential exercise, and the evidence has a specific shape: material showing the step-by-step evolution of the work, dated before the alleged access occurred.
The recent federal litigation over the BTS single "Swim" illustrates the point. The claimants allege the track shares its title and core elements with an unreleased demo; the defendants maintain the song was created independently. Commentary on the case has been direct about what that defence requires in practice — time-stamped project files, early voice memos, and session stems documenting how the song developed before any alleged exposure to the other work.
The sequence is what matters. A finished master proves the record exists. It does not show the order in which the parts arrived, and it cannot distinguish a topline written in an empty room from one written after hearing something similar. What answers the claim is the trail: the voice memo of the hook before the session, the first arrangement, the stems as they were at each stage, each dated, each preceding the moment the claimant says you gained access.
There is a second use for the same record, on the other side of the clearance question. When you do clear a sample, the licence covers a defined portion of a defined recording. If a rights holder later argues you used more than you cleared, the evidence that resolves it is the session as it stood at the point of clearance — showing exactly what was taken and what was played.
Producers are not short of documentation. A DAW project file records every edit. Bounced stems sit in dated folders. Cloud storage keeps version histories. Voice memos carry timestamps. Collaboration platforms log who opened a session and when. For working out what happened, this material is useful, and it has succeeded in litigation. In Evans v John Lewis Plc & Anor [2023] EWHC 766 (IPEC), the defendants produced an outline of their concept whose metadata dated it to February 2016 — before the claimant's book was published in September 2017 — and the court held that access to her work could not be inferred.
So the limitation is not that these records are worthless. It is that they are produced and held by the party relying on them, and their dates are set by that party's own systems. A DAW file's creation date comes from the machine that produced the session. A cloud version history is maintained by a platform the producer chose and funds. A voice memo's timestamp comes from the producer's phone.
In an ordinary dispute that may never be tested. In a contested claim with real money attached, opposing counsel's response is available and obvious: the files were produced by the defendant, on systems the defendant controls, and the dates carry only the defendant's own assurance. The evidence still has weight, but it invites an argument the producer cannot fully close, precisely at the point where the burden has shifted to the defence.
The gap is narrow but it is the one that matters. The producer may well have written the part first. What they often cannot do is prove the date to a party with no reason to take their word.
The gap between what a producer holds and what an infringement claim requires is closed by making an independently anchored record at the point of creation — while the session is live, not once a claim has arrived.
When a file is deposited — a voice memo, a stem, a bounced arrangement, a session export, a lyric sheet — the file is hashed using SHA-256, the hash is timestamped by an accredited Trust Service Provider under RFC 3161, and the timestamped hash is anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain via OpenTimestamps. This is a single automated sequential process — each step depends on the output of the preceding one. The result is a portable certificate recording the file name, the cryptographic fingerprint, the timestamp, and the blockchain anchor.
A free RFC 3161 timestamp from an unaccredited service produces a technically valid record but carries no legal presumption — the holder would have to argue for its accuracy in any proceeding. With optional eIDAS Article 41 qualification from an accredited QTSP, the timestamp carries a legal presumption of accuracy across all 27 EU member states. Under US Federal Rule of Evidence 902(14), a certified record of a process producing an accurate hash of data can be self-authenticating.
Applied across a project, the certificates do what a single dated master cannot. Each deposit fixes what existed at that moment, so the sequence — memo, first arrangement, revised stems, final bounce — becomes an independently dated chronology rather than a folder the other side can question. Where a claim turns on whether the topline predates the alleged access, the record answers it with dates no party to the dispute produced.
For the clearance side, the same record establishes what the session contained when the licence was granted, which is the evidence that resolves a dispute about scope.
The workflow maps to how records get made rather than adding a separate process. A writer deposits the voice memo at the end of the session that produced the hook. A producer deposits the arrangement bounce at the point the structure settles, and the stems when the parts are final. A co-writing session deposits the day's work before anyone leaves the room. None of it requires the session files themselves to leave the studio: only the fingerprint is submitted, so the material stays under the creator's control while the date becomes independently verifiable.
For catalogues rather than single records, the same infrastructure produces a body of dated evidence rather than isolated certificates. Each deposited version carries its own certificate, so a writer with a decade of work holds a dated chronology of how each piece developed — which is the form the evidence needs to take when a claim concerns a song written years before anyone thought it would matter.
For a producer, the anchored record changes what happens when a claim lands. The independent creation defence stops depending on files the claimant will attack as self-produced, and starts resting on dated certificates that show the work taking shape before the access the claimant alleges.
For an artist, the same infrastructure covers the material that clearance does not reach. A cleared sample is documented by the licence. Everything else on the record — the parts that are your own, and the parts most likely to attract a claim — is documented only if a record was made at the time.
For a label or publisher assessing risk before release, an anchored creation history changes the diligence position. Rather than taking a writer's account of how a song came together, the catalogue holds dated evidence of it, which matters both when clearing a release and when defending one.
Sample clearance answers a question you already knew to ask. The claims that cause the most damage are the ones over material nobody thought needed clearing, where the only defence is proving you got there first. That proof cannot be assembled after the claim arrives. It is made in the session, or it is not made at all.
This post provides general information about the role of cryptographic evidence in music copyright disputes. It is not legal advice. For advice on a specific matter, consult a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction.
Related Reading
Why Proving Access Is Key to Copyright Claims — Finnegan
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James Snell is the founder of Provlyn, a platform providing cryptographic prior proof of IP ownership. provlyn.com