That reminds me of one of the
few, truly entertaining moments in
Rocky V...
Most copyright owners, performers and their
leeches representatives are far more interested in targeting hit albums/singles with silver, gold, platinum etc certification because there's guaranteed to be a payday, rather than people who are flying under the radar and just doing stuff for the fun of it. Hence the expression "where there's a hit, there's a writ."
When I became interested in sampling, someone from Steinberg who demoed
ReCycle for me (and urged my unemployed self to buy a PowerMac to run it), explained that you can get away with having uncleared stuff played on the radio and in the clubs on the basis that it's not a commercial release and thus the goal is artist promotion.
As an aside, one of my family members put together a remix for a well known UK artist and soon after its release, he received a phone call from a record company exec accusing him of copyright infringement by using an uncleared sample on the track. He then clarified the situation during a conference call involving himself, the exec, a musicologist and a legal shark where he went into his studio and talked them through the entire production process of the remix and demonstrated how he'd played the melody on his keyboards - allowing the trio to hear everything.
The musicologist stated to the others that there was no case to answer and the matter came to a close. Though I imagine that the other two must've been annoyed at being denied their cut of a windfall.