In Henry Jenkins article “Taking the You Out of YouTube?”, it is discussed how Web 2.0 places an “emphasis upon participation, social networking, collective intelligence”. It is a fan culture, which creates sites like Youtube, Wikipedia, MySpace, etc. Jenkins explains “ At the heart of the Web 2.0 movement is this idea that there is real value created by tapping the shared wisdom of grassroots communities, composed mostly of fans, hobbyists, and other amateur media makers”. Youtube, although it allows for creativity to be brought to the forefront, has certain restrictions which determine if a video gets monetized or taken down for copyright. However, in the article “INFOENCLOSURE 2.0” By Dmytri Kleiner & Brian Wyrick, the authors see Web 2.0 as an “Internet Investment Boom 2.0…Web 2.0 is a business model, it means private capture of community-created value”. The authors explain that “The real value of YouTube is not created by the developers of the site, but rather it is created by the people who upload videos to the site”.
In the article “1 + 1 + 1 = 1
The new math of mashups” by Sasha Frere-Jones, she explains a mashup as which the vocals from one song is laid over the music from another. Jones explains “Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does”.
Mark Vidler, AKA the Go Home Productions, explained some other benefits of digital technology to me in London not long ago: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself”.
Similarly In the article “Grey Album Producer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It”, the author explains how Brian Burton created a Jay-Z & Beatles mashup. Burton took apart the albums songs piece by piece to create the mashup and used a $400 software tool to add Jay-Z’s vocals surrounding The Beatles music. This shows that anyone with some talent and skill can create their own mashup.