Cleared Soul Samples for Commercial Use
Public domain, CC0 & CC-BY — with a license certificate per download
Soul is the backbone of boom bap — the vocal chops, Rhodes chords, and string swells that are the DNA of sample-based hip-hop. It's also the riskiest genre to clear, because the records producers reach for are owned by major labels and publishers who price clearance in the tens of thousands.
Hear cleared soul samples
What “cleared” means here
Every soul sample in the Selekt catalog comes from a named, verified source — public domain, CC0, or CC-BY — not an anonymous “royalty-free” upload. Each download ships with a license certificate naming the source, the exact license, and any attribution required, and samples from less-authoritative sources are fingerprint-screened against 150M+ commercial recordings. So you can get that texture — the chops, the warmth, the movement — from public-domain, CC0, and CC-BY sources you can actually release on — with documentation you can keep, not just a label that says “cleared.”
How to flip soul samples
Cleared source is only half of it. Every track is analyzed for BPM, key, and mood, separated into stems (vocals, drums, bass, and more), and ready for the free browser tools — chop it, re-pitch it, build a beat in the Drum Kit, or re-voice a melody in Stem Lab. And modifying melodic loops is good practice anyway — it lowers the odds of an automated Content ID match (more in our guide to avoiding Content ID claims).
Browse cleared soul samples
Listen, filter by BPM and key, and download with a license certificate per track.
How to verify soul samples before release
A few minutes of due diligence saves headaches later: how to verify a sample is really cleared, royalty-free vs public domain vs CC0, and screen your finished mix against 150M+ commercial recordings for a signed audit log.
