He wasn’t alone. Jayson Musson, a rapper from Philadelphia, received an excited call from another member of the former rap collective Plastic Little, who told him that his voice could be heard on the hit song as well, yelling out the key phrase “Do the Harlem Shake!”

Neither gave permission to the song’s producer and writer, Harry Bauer Rodrigues, who records under the name Baauer, to use snippets of their records, they said. “It’s almost like they came on my land and built a house,” Mr. Delgado said.

Both Mr. Musson and Mr. Delgado are seeking compensation from Mad Decent Records, which put out the single last year. The label and Mr. Rodrigues declined to comment. But the tale of how an obscure dance track containing possible copyright violations rose to the top of pop charts illustrates not only the free-for-all nature of underground dance music but also the power of an Internet fad to create a sudden hit outside the major-label system.

Obtaining licenses to use samples has become standard practice in the music industry, and in most cases a license is needed from both the music publisher and the record label that made the master recording. Courts have held that even a short sample entitles the sampled artist to royalties; the amount is negotiable.

But small labels, like Mad Decent, sometimes lack the resources to have lawyers vet releases and instead rely on producers to make sure recordings are free of copyright problems. These labels frequently have little to do with the production of the tracks, especially in electronic dance music.

“You don’t have the same checks and balances that you would if it were done by a corporation with a legal department,” said David Israelite, the president and chief executive of the National Music Publishers Association.

“Harlem Shake” has been at the top of the Billboard 100 pop chart for three weeks and as of Friday had sold 816,000 digital downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It benefited from a recent change in Billboard’s methodology to include YouTube views along with radio airplay and singles sales in its ranking.

The song was released last May on Jeffrees, a sublabel of Mad Decent that lets producers release dance tracks without signing a contract giving the label exclusive rights to the song, label executives told Billboard magazine. The label initially offered “Harlem Shake” as a free download, then began charging for it in June as part of EP.

But sales of the song did not shoot up until last month, when it became the soundtrack for a YouTube dance craze. The fad involved people posting wacky videos of themselves dancing convulsively in absurd costumes to the first 30 seconds of the track, which begins with Mr. Delgado, whose stage name was Hector El Father, singing, “Con los terroristas” (“With the terrorists”). Mr. Musson sings “Do the Harlem shake” 15 seconds into the track, a cue for the dancers to thrash around wildly.

As thousands of people uploaded videos, demand for the original track spiraled, and Baauer became an overnight star, appearing on the cover of Billboard.

The track has roots in Philadelphia’s dance and hip-hop scene, where Mr. Rodrigues, 23, of Brooklyn, has worked as a disc jockey under the name Cap’n Harry. Mr. Rodrigues told The Daily Beast that he found the recording of Mr. Delgado online. “The dude in the beginning I got off the Internet, I don’t even know where,” he said.

The sample can be traced back to Mr. Delgado’s 2006 single “Maldades” from the album “The Bad Boy,” released on Machete records, on which it was a refrain. He used it on other songs as well. “It’s like a trademark of Hector’s,” Mr. Gómez, the former manager, said.

In 2010 two Philadelphia disc jockeys — Skinny Friedman and DJ Apt One — borrowed the recording of the line to spice up a remix of another dance track by Gregor Salto called “Con Alegría,” which they released on their own Young Robots label on the album “Moombhaton de Acero.” They also included the snippet on a 2011 collection of beats for disc jockeys, “TA Breaks 3: Moombahton Loops and Samples.”

Mr. Delgado has yet to take legal action against the Philadelphia producers, whose remix was not a hit, Mr. Gómez said.

The recording of Mr. Musson’s exhortation to “do the Harlem Shake” comes from “Miller Time,” a 2001 rap by the Philadelphia group Plastic Little. In an e-mail Mr. Musson, who lives in New York and works under the name Hennessy Youngman, said he found out that Mr. Baauer had used his vocal line in late February, when a former member of the group, Kurt Hunte, pointed it out.

Mr. Musson said he called Mr. Rodrigues and thanked him for “doing something useful with our annoying music” Still, he said that he was negotiating with Mad Decent over compensation and that, though no agreement had been reached, the discussions had been friendly.

“Mad Decent have been more than cooperative during this,” he added in an e-mail. He declined to give details. Mr. Gómez said the founder of Mad Decent, the disc jockey Thomas Pentz, who records under the name Diplo, telephoned Mr. Delgado and his former manager, last month. Mr. Gómez said Mr. Pentz had told Mr. Delgado that he was unaware the single contained the vocal line from “The Bad Boy” when the single was released. Mr. Pentz declined a request to be interviewed.

Since that call, Mr. Gómez said, lawyers for Machete Music, which is owned by Universal Music Group, have been negotiating with Mad Decent over payment for the sample.

“Hector will get what he deserves,” he said. “We can turn around and stop that song. That’s a clear breaking of intellectual property rights.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/arts/music/baauers-harlem-shake-hits-no-1-with-unlicensed-samples.html?partner=rss&emc=rss