You rarely hear anyone cover the Beastie Boys. Is it because their songs rely so much on samples that they’re impossible to recreate legally without making a profit? How did they not get sued into oblivion with hundreds of samples used? Where do those royalties go today?
I should note that we still got more of this stuff thanks to the regular web, mostly from the early 2000s onward, once digital tools for creating and sharing got better and cheaper. But yeah, mainstream modern platforms with content matching do make sharing more complicated.