Copyright law has unsuccessfully been striving to keep up with the rapid digitization that has changed the music industry in recent decades. Predominantly obsolete copyright guidelines inhibit creativity, rather than encourage and protect artists in an era of increasing democratization of music. This problem is especially evident in the genre of electronic dance music, which has been dealing with stringent measures that try to suppress unauthorized sampling that is inherent to it since the beginning of the 1990s. The greed of record labels has been highlighted as one of the main reasons behind the ever-increasing limitations for creators. Using the qualitative method, I investigated the effects of copyright on the creativity of DJs and producers from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. I came to the conclusion that copyright only partly hampers the creativity of sampling artists, yet they do resort to increasingly innovative approaches and avoid using samples of commercially recognizable artists. I also came to the conclusion that sampling artists have concerns regarding the proposed alternatives or amendments to the existing legislation, such as Creative Commons, or are not acquainted in detail.
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