Is it legal to sample 10 seconds from ten songs, throw them together into a playlist, and upload that playlist to youtube? I then embed that uploaded playlist ( which contains 10 second samples of songs in a playlist ) to my website. I can't see how this competes with or in any way damages the artists whose songs im using. I also give credit to the artists.
Is it still legal if I profit from google adsense from the traffic that goes to my site? What about if in the videos I uploaded to youtube have a picture in the background that says the name of my website?
No, it is not legal to just sample music. There is both the copyright and the performance, both of which you need separate permission to use. If you were using it for a non-commercial educational or news purpose, you might be within fair use, but based on what you are describing, this would not fall into fair use.
"Fair use" is very narrow, and generally applies to educational use and parody. Otherwise, you are violating the copyrights of their respective owners.
I don't believe you can use the music for samples in that manner. Some educational and leisure use is ok, but commercial definitely not.
You need mjewel to give a definitive on this - I was under the impression that the first 30 seconds or so were fair game (but I'm probably wrong)