A teenager in the Netherlands chopped up a sample on his laptop and sold it for $30. What happened next became the longest-running #1 single in Billboard history, and a crash course in sampling, uncleared licenses, and the modern digital music ecosystem.
"Old Town Road" is one of the most remarkable stories in modern music history. What began as a teenager in the Netherlands chopping up a sample on his laptop and selling the result for $30 on a beat marketplace became the longest-running #1 single in Billboard Hot 100 history at 19 weeks, and introduced millions of students, artists, and lawyers to the complex world of sampling, uncleared licenses, and the modern digital music ecosystem.
In 2008, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross released Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I–IV under a Creative Commons license, free to share, but not for commercial use. The album contained a haunting banjo instrumental. In 2018, Dutch teenager Kiowa Roukema ("Young Kio") discovered the sample on YouTube, chopped it up, added a trap beat, and sold it to Lil Nas X on BeatStars for $30, with a 50/50 publishing split. The NIN sample was not cleared.
Lil Nas X recorded his vocals for $20 at an Atlanta studio's "Discount Tuesday" special, then posted the song to TikTok, where it spread through the "Yeehaw Challenge" with no label, no radio, and no promotion. Billboard added the song to its country chart, then removed it for not having "enough elements of today's country music," igniting a national debate about race and genre gatekeeping. Lil Nas X turned the controversy into his greatest asset by recruiting Billy Ray Cyrus for the remix. Columbia Records then signed him, retroactively clearing the NIN sample and adding Reznor and Ross as co-writers. The Billy Ray Cyrus remix went on to break the record for the longest-running #1 in Billboard Hot 100 history.
"Old Town Road" didn't just happen. It was a masterclass in viral marketing executed by a teenager who understood the internet better than most major labels.
The lowest-budget #1 in history: $30 for the beat + $20 for the studio session = $50 total production cost. It became the fastest song in history to be certified Diamond (10 million units).
Six different parties hold publishing rights to this single song. Note how the NIN sample creators, who had nothing to do with "Old Town Road," collectively hold more publishing than the artist whose name is on the record.
Wrote and recorded "34 Ghosts IV," the banjo instrumental forming the musical backbone. Largest single share of any stakeholder.
Dutch teenage producer who combined the NIN sample with a trap rhythm. The $30 beat he sold now generates royalties worth far more.
Wrote the lyrics and vocal melody. Despite being the face of the song, holds less publishing than the NIN sample creators combined.
Co-created "34 Ghosts IV" with Reznor. Together, Reznor and Ross hold 50% of publishing.
Listen along: Hear how the song evolved from the original NIN sample to Lil Nas X's debut recording to the Billy Ray Cyrus remix.
Sampling is one of the defining creative tools of hip-hop and one of the most legally complex areas of music copyright. When you sample another song, you need to clear two separate licenses before releasing commercially.
Permission to use the actual audio from "34 Ghosts IV." Negotiated with whoever owns the NIN master recording.
Cleared retroactivelyPermission to use the underlying composition. Resulted in Reznor and Ross receiving co-writer credit and 50% of publishing.
Not cleared upfrontYoung Kio sampled the NIN track without clearing it first, a common practice among bedroom producers. Once the song became a massive hit, the sample had to be cleared retroactively, and Sony almost certainly paid a significant back-royalty sum to Reznor and Ross for co-writer credits worth far more than anyone anticipated when Young Kio uploaded that $30 beat.
Banjo instrumental released under Creative Commons, free to share, not for commercial use.
NIN sample combined with a trap rhythm, sold on BeatStars for $30.
Lil Nas X vocals added for $20; song goes viral, sample cleared retroactively, NIN gets 50% publishing.
Mechanical + performance royalties. ~$0.004 per stream. Label/distributor ~56%, platform keeps 30%, publishing ~14%. The largest ongoing revenue stream for a song with billions of streams.
Where the song first went viral, generating massive awareness value before it generated direct royalty income, the promotional power of social media even at low per-play rates.
Automatically detects copyrighted music and monetizes or blocks it. For a song with millions of user-generated videos, this generates significant revenue flowing to all 6 stakeholders.
Every airplay triggers a PRO performance royalty, split 50% songwriters / 50% publishers, divided per the publishing percentages above.
Across 55 years and two completely different eras of the music industry, the lesson is the same: artists lose control of their music not through bad luck, but through incomplete knowledge of the contracts they sign and the rights they create. Whether it's a publishing deal signed in a manager's office in 1963 or a $30 beat lease on BeatStars in 2018, the mechanism is identical, someone else ends up owning the most valuable part of what you made.