Any real digital distribution or TV/film placement of songs cannot have samples from anybody else's work. Your song may slip by digital distribution if you lie and say there are no samples, but they ask and clearly say it can't . TV/film placement will ask if there are samples and reject you if you say yes. If you say they no and they find one, they'll reject you and probably never work with you again.
...but ya, you know, a low-key release with nobody listening to it will fly under the radar, but don't you want to succeed?
Like guru said, you can sample from the original copyright holder but you need written permission from them.
(Somebody just asked to sample from me in fact. I gave them permission in writing, and they're good to go! ...they also paid me $100, but i still own the copyright.)
And as everyone has mentioned, yeah presets on a VST are okay. It's the complete musical idea like a melody, chorus, etc. that's like considered a copyrightable (is that a word?) work.
And honestly, (most of the time) you can still post a song with samples and have as many views/plays on it as you can get! Most copyright holders don't care, but you wont be allowed to make any money on it. The money will go to the copyright holders.
Copyright is both on the arrangement, and the recording. They're separate copyrights though. If you sample an entire riff you're infringing them both. If you sample just one note or drum hit from it you might have a case you're only infringing on the recording, since you can't copyright "C-note played on guitar" lol. That's also why it was/is common practice for producers that can afford it to just arrange for some session musicians to re-record a sample. That way it becomes a cover version, which is cheaper because you only have to license the recording and give the session musician some coffee and a pat on the shoulder.
Then there's the case of ubiquitous samples like the amen break, the King Tubby beep.. stuff that has been used so many times, that if you did and got sued for it, you'd probably have a case
simply by pointing at everybody else that did and didn't get sued for it. There's also lots of music where the rights are either in dispute, forgotten about or simply not enforced.
Take some grand-grand-nephew of the guitarist of a band that released one record in the 70's that flopped. The 5000 pressed copies have been sitting in a warehouse for decades, until the warehouse went bust and it all landed on a rummage sale where you got one. Now, someone has to first recognise that sample from that band no one ever heard. Then they have to find out who holds the rights.. find and notify the nephew. They then have to start enforcing their copyright for anything to happen. Something which they probably don't know how to do, and even if they did.. it's probably not worth the effort.
Or just simply.. all the artists that don't hold the rights to their music. It's with the labels, their managers.. or whoever else fleeced them out of it (look up 'music industry +mob' on Google and have some fun reading). Suppose it's a label. Suppose again it's a flop record, on a label that never made it either. If the label goes bust, who's gonna buy the rights to that catalogue no-one gives a shit about?
So the grey area is pretty huge. Unless you really need 'that' sample for some creative reason.. you can probably find sound-a-likes or maybe just reproduce it yourself. But it's always murky waters. You can't know which rights are enforced and which are not. That's why distributors and labels generally don't want to touch anything with samples, they don't want any chance of getting embroiled in disputes like that... often simply because they don't have the resources to fight a battle like that... for you. Even if they're not involved in the legal dispute (and why should they?) it still drags them into a messy and time consuming process of issuing takedown notices. Not to mention dealing with copyright strikes some services might give, which can affect a whole lot of shit... even your access. iTunes will just cut you off.. good bye.
So it's better to just stay out of it, if you can.. No-one is gonna come after a small fry and you can get pretty far until you pop up on radars.. but the moment you blow up all the hounds will be right at your door. They'll happily wait for you to have actually made some royalties on it, before they come in and claim it all ... it is a business after all. They get off on that. A lot of people make their money that way.
