>I know Prince's songs are almost impossible to clear. Outside
>of It Ain't Hard to Tell, are there any other songs which had
>the clearance to use a MJ sample.

As Brew said, there have been a bunch. Off the top, MC Lyte & Exscape,. De La Soul. LL Cool J, Kanye West, Naughty By Nature. Mobb Deep, etc. In terms of Jackson 5, I'm sure Puff Daddy cleared the interpolation of "One More Chance" for Biggie and "Good to Be Here" for the breakdown on "Benjamins." Naughty By Nature gave up a huge amount of their publishing to sample "ABC" for "O.P.P."


>Have The Beatles ever been sampled.

Yes, also a bunch of times. The one group who talked about it were The Beastie Boys.

I know the Stones were
>sampled for Bittersweet Symphony but that deal was crazy. The
>Rolling Stones got all of the royalties for that song, didn't
>they?

Yep. And The Verve can't ever perform it again or put it on any of their greatest hits albums.

And they didn't even sample the Rolling Stones proper. They sampled a cover of "Time is On My Side" by the London Philharmonic.

But other people have sampled the Stones too.

Marvin Gaye's catalog probably won't be touched again
>after Blurred Lines.

All Motown records are notoriously costly to sample, even before Robin Thicke.

>Any other groups or solo artists who are really reluctant to
>license their songs?

Sampling or licensing for movies/TV shows/commercials?

For the former, I'd imagine almost all of them are cost prohibitive these days. Unless you have a HUGE major label budget.

But of the artists who were notoriously costly back in the '90s, once sample clearances became a money maker, were James Brown, The Crusaders, Barry White, most of the Stax artists, etc.