Mashups are when an artists “mashes” two or more songs into one whole song and posts it somewhere for people to hear. This has always been a complicated issue between copyright infringement and being able to allow the creator of the mashup to receive monetary value for their work. In “1+1+1=1” by Sasha Frere-Jones, she states that ““Frontin’ on Debra” is an example of a “mashup,” in which, generally, the vocal from one song is laid over the music from another. The best-known mashup in the United States is an unauthorized album-length project called “The Grey Album,” assembled by Brian Burton, known professionally as Danger Mouse. The vocals are from Jay-Z’s “The Black Album,” and the musical bed is a highly processed and reorganized version of the Beatles’ “White Album.””. Albums like these used to be very popular, and as technology evolved so has the way we listen to music. Layering artists who you might not have thought would pair well together is a skill, it’s a talent. It’s like learning how specific alcohols go with specific cuts of meat or seafood. You may not realize it in the beginning, but that red wine does go well with that cut of steak and the history behind that was trial and error- but also analyzation and skill. Now, one can find mashups anywhere on the web but more specifically YouTube. Modern day examples of mashups would be artists like William Singe who takes popular hip hop songs and pairs up the ones that would sound better together, and then putting an R&B twist to it. That’s his signature and YouTube allows him to make money off of the videos he produces because he isn’t using exact words from the songs he chooses. Another example of this would be SoMo, who used his mash ups to eventually record his own album. He does an R&B take on the songs he mashes up, and YouTube doesn’t take it down because he doesn’t always use the exact words of those songs- he’ll replace Drake’s name in a song with his own or he’ll replace the N-word with “singa” (as does William Singe). It’s little tweaks to these mashups that can allow for them to not be victims of copyright infringement, therefore YouTube can’t do much about them. Creating mashups isn’t a lazy way of producing music, it takes a skillful ear and background knowledge on music production itself. Mashups are a way of allowing music artists to express themselves in ways they probably couldn’t before because maybe they don’t know how to write lyrics or because they don’t want to showcase their own songs yet. Whatever the case may be, recognition for the hard work that goes into mashups need to be put in place because it can be hard to produce a successful song. Usually, these songs also have such well known artists or beats that the integrity of the original artists is not being taken away but instead admired and appreciated.
Apr 30