Help & FAQ

SAMPLEMENT is an independent music-discovery catalogue and a place to follow connections between tracks, artists, releases and sampling culture. Browse the catalogue, make Crates, use Sample Chopper and explore community videos.

Search the catalogue and combine filters for genre and subgenre, year or decade, country or continent, album or single, BPM and key. Use the interactive map to choose countries individually or draw an area. Sort by title, artist, genre, year, BPM or Last Added; Last Added is selected by default. Random opens a catalogue track for you.

In the expanded map, click a country to include or exclude it, or draw an outline to select the countries inside that area. Include All and Exclude All reset the selection in one step. The map filter works together with the other Discover filters.

Yes. Where a name is linked, open its page to see the catalogue tracks connected to that artist, album, label, genre or subgenre. Artist pages also group the artist’s tracks and releases, when that information is available.

A Crate is a collection of catalogue tracks that you gather around a sound, place, period or idea. Every Crate is public and appears in the Crates collection and on your profile, where anyone can browse it.

A Crate needs at least one track. If you remove its last track, SAMPLEMENT warns you before deleting the Crate, so you can cancel if you want to keep it.

No. A track can appear only once in the same Crate. You can add it to other Crates, and you can edit a Crate’s title, description and track list from your account.

You can browse Discover, public Crates and Videos without signing in. An account is needed to create and manage your Crates, like tracks, follow listeners, use Liked Tracks, save chops for catalogue tracks and submit music or videos. Registration is for people aged 16 and over.

Open Add Music and paste a YouTube link that can play in an embedded player. SAMPLEMENT checks the link, suggests a title and one or more artists, then moves to Review & Submit so you can correct the track title, artists, album or single, artwork and other details before sending it for review. A track is not submitted until you choose Add to Catalogue.

Your live account and profile are removed. Shared catalogue records may remain without their account link. A restricted moderation record may retain the username, the reason and timing of an account ban or deletion, and the staff member who recorded the action, for community-safety and moderation purposes. You can contact SAMPLEMENT to ask about that record.

The site uses the YouTube title and artist as search clues, then looks for a recording and release in MusicBrainz. When album, year and duration evidence is strong, it proposes the earliest matching official edition. Review the result and use Choose Edition if you need to pick a different one.

MusicBrainz may suggest a main genre; you can confirm or change it, then choose an optional community-confirmed subgenre. Discogs provides release references for comparison during submission. GetSongBPM lookup is not active yet, so BPM and key may be missing and should be entered manually. Artwork is required: SAMPLEMENT tries external cover artwork first, then the YouTube thumbnail, and lets you use another image URL. The site stores the image link rather than hosting the artwork file.

Open Add Video, paste a YouTube link and choose a category, any available subcategory and the video language. The title is filled in from YouTube and can be edited. The link must work in an embedded player, and all required choices must be selected. Community submissions appear in Videos after review.

If you added a track, open its page and choose Edit to update its information, including its artists and artwork. Use Wrong Info on a track page to suggest a correction, or Report a Problem for an issue elsewhere on the site.

You earn 20 XP when a track is approved, 10 XP when a video is published, 15 XP for each artist you discover for the first time, 10 XP for each country you explore for the first time, and 10 XP for creating a Crate. Adding tracks to Crates does not earn XP, and there is no daily XP cap. The six levels are Newcomer (0 XP), Listener (100), Explorer (300), Digger (700), Collector (1,500) and Archivist (3,000). Achievements track milestones such as tracks and videos added, artists and countries discovered, and likes received on your tracks and public Crates. Your Account shows your progress and XP History.

Choose a catalogue track, a liked track or a random track, or paste a YouTube link. Play and seek through the video, set Loop Start and Loop End, trigger the 16 Pads automatically or place chops manually, change playback speed and save one set of chop positions per catalogue track. You can also tap a tempo, enter a BPM and set the metronome’s start point. Use Play Instrument to play Piano, Bass or Synth over two octaves, or switch to 16 original Drum Pads using the same keyboard shortcuts as the YouTube pads.

The three hosted loops—Hip-Hop, Funk/Break and House/Disco—play separately from YouTube. You can adjust their BPM, time-stretch the audio and set a loop to Sync with Metronome. When synced, the loop follows the metronome’s BPM; changing the loop does not change the metronome. The YouTube video, loops and metronome have separate volume controls.

The Drum Pads bank contains 16 original one-shot sounds and uses the same 1–8 and Q–I shortcuts as the YouTube pads. Play Instrument offers Piano, Bass, Synth and Bell over two octaves, playable with the on-screen keys or the displayed keyboard shortcuts. The MIDI menu lists planned devices, but they are not connected yet.

Sign in, load a catalogue track and choose Save Chops. One set can be saved for each catalogue track; it is locked when saved. Choose Chops Locked to unlock, edit and save it again. Chops made with a pasted YouTube link are not attached to a catalogue track and cannot be saved.

Sampled This is a community marker that lets you say you have sampled a track. Sampled In is where you can suggest a track that sampled the music on the page you are viewing. Add the other track’s title and artist, and optionally its album; the suggestion is shown as community-submitted information.

No. Catalogue recordings are streamed in YouTube’s embedded player. SAMPLEMENT hosts three fixed drum loops and 16 original one-shot Drum Pad sounds. Play Instrument generates Piano, Bass, Synth and Bell notes in your browser; it does not record or store your performance. Some YouTube videos do not allow embedded playback, in which case choose another link. Chrome and Brave have worked well for Sample Chopper; Safari is not recommended.

No. A catalogue entry, YouTube link or chop cue does not grant permission to copy, release or commercially use a sample. Check the rights that apply and obtain the permissions or licences you need from the relevant rights holders.

The Videos page groups videos into categories and, where available, subcategories. Select one or more category buttons, search by title or words in the video details, and filter by language. The video list can play videos directly on the page; you can also open any video in Movie Room.

Movie Room is a focused way to watch the SAMPLEMENT video collection. Use Previous, Random and Next or choose a video from the list. Focus Mode dims the surrounding page, while Make Browser Full Screen uses your browser’s full-screen view. You can return to Videos at any time.

Your public profile can show your username, avatar, roles, level, earned badges, followers and following, contributions, recent discoveries and the social links you add. Your email address is not displayed. You can change your username once per month, if the new name is available. All Crates are public and appear on your profile and in the Crates collection. Read the Privacy Policy for more about account data and browser storage.

The bell shows activity alerts for new followers, approved music or video submissions, replies to your reports, level-ups and promotions into the site XP TOP 1, TOP 2 or TOP 3. You can mark alerts as read. Administrators and moderators also see a separate Moderation category with counts of music submissions, video submissions and reports waiting for review.

In your Account, add an avatar by uploading an image or entering an image URL, then adjust its crop. Change Theme lets you switch between dark, light and MPC, preview a highlight colour and save the one you prefer. You can restore the original orange highlight at any time.

Use Report a Problem on the relevant page, or contact us through the Contact page. Include the page or track link and a short description of what happened. Do not send your password or other sensitive personal information.

Support is voluntary and processed by Ko-fi, outside the SAMPLEMENT site. Visit the Donate page if you would like to contribute to the project.