This argument has been around for a while in the music industry. Sampling is when you take something from a pre recording and add it to your own recording. eg taking a base line from one song, a drum line from another and a piano line from another song and mixing it all together to make a new song.

Many muscians see this as theft, in my opinion if someone samples a whole song and just adds a drum beat to it then it's theft, but if someone takes a riff there and a note there and slows it down and speeds it up, changes the volume and pitch and chops it up and mixes it in such a way that it has become unreconsible to the original recording and in a way has been re recorded in a whole new song to make a whole new listining experince then I don't beleive it's stealing.

In a way producers are like modern composers controling the sound, pitch, timing, when the drums should start and when the bass should come in just like a muscial composer does with an orchestra.

Na, it aint theft to me, everything is recycled in one way or another.

Being a composer for a little over 8 years, i wouldn't consider it stealing - I would consider it a bitch move. It's like they take the originalilty out of what music really is and not even pushing yourself. That's one of the reasons why I dislike Kanye. When producers take vocals from old songs and claim they added everything else, it's a flat out lie. What they do is they listen to the vocals and find which key(s) they're on. Then, all they do is work around it by adding notes that seem to sound right (composing by ear).

Most producers can't even read music notes :(.

Most producers can't even read music notes :(.

By that do you mean being able to read music because a lot of rock muscians never learnt to read traditional music either.

yeah it is stealing, coz ur taking it from someone elses work