Creativity

New media has unleashed and foster creativity from ordinary people because of the adaptability and ease of using new tools that help widely distribute creative content throughout diverse platforms. Plus, with the technology becoming cheaper and most networking sites offering free services to upload, edit and share user-generated content, people now have a stage that allows them to showcase what they have created or produced. This has further allowed regular folks to distribute their creative expressions with not only family and friends but also the world which has the potential of going viral. This has created many different kinds of new phenomenons that have also been exploited by average people for commercial purposes and not just fun, with some even creating businesses around their creative generated contents. One of these experimental forms of expressions is what’s called ‘Mashups.’

What are Mashups? Dictionary.com (n.d.) defined mashups as “1. Music, Slang. a recording that combines vocal and instrumental tracks from two or more recordings: 2. Slang. a creative combination or mixing of content from different sources.” Additionally, Margaret Rouse (2016) had stated that a ‘mash-up is a webpage or application that integrates complementary elements from two or more sources and like blogs and social media, mashups have become popular as part of the ongoing shift towards more and more interactive and participatory Web (Web 2.0) with its greater concentration of user-defined content and services” (para. 3). She also had said that the term mashup had originated in the music industry, in which songs are combined from two or more other songs to create a new song (Rouse, 2016, para. 4).

In the article from the New Yorker titled 1+1+1 = 1; The new math of mashups by Sasha Frere-Jones (2005), the author had said that Mashups were commonly the vocal from one song that is laid over the music from another (para. 4). Moreover, the best known of these Mashups in the USA being the Grey album from Brian Burton or as he’s better known by his professional name Danger Mouse, which is an unauthorized album-length project. He took the vocals from Jay-Z’s the Black album and combined it with the highly processed and reorganized musical from the Beetles White album to create his masterpiece the Grey album (Frere-Jones, 2005, para. 4). As Frere-Jones (2005) had also said that Mashups have found new uses for current digital technology and the most renowned mashups are melodically tuned and posited in a harmonic relationship with two singers exactly in tune (Para. 4-5). In contrast a remix is traditionally simply a song taken apart and enhanced by the addition of new elements but not actually combined with another song (Frere-Jones, 2005, para. 8).

EXAMPLE of a music Mashup; 'A Stroke Of Genie-us' by Freelance Hellraiser. 

Christina Aguilera’s vocal from “Genie in a Bottle,” over the music from the Strokes “Hard to Explain.”

 Sample 1: Christina Aguilera’s vocal from
                                                                                                  'Genie in a Bottle.'

 Sample 2: The Strokes 'Hard to Explain.'

 Final Mashup: 'A Stroke Of Genie-us'

Furthermore, Mashups also consist of combining popular songs with edited clips of movies and TV show characters that are set with them lip-syncing in unison with the music. In the article from the New York Times titled ‘Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?’ by Brooks Barnes (2017), the author had said that these types of mashups sometimes use the YouTube platform to showcase user-generated videos of snippets from both popular Disney animated movies and TV characters or other big media companies famous animated personalities like SpongeBob that are synchronized with the finished products looking like music videos in which the cartoon characters are doing the singing (Barnes, 2017, para. 3). The article pointed out to the Mashups of celebrated animated characters such as Bambi, Simba and Winnie the Pooh that are set to Crank That (Soulja Boy) by rapper Soulja boy and posted on YouTube by users that have also become viral sensation as an example.

However, even though these kinds of Mashups created by users have either become virally famous or celebrated mashups, they can also face copyright infringement, especially when it becomes commercially successful or are created for profit. In the article from the New Yorker titled 1+1+1 = 1; The new math of mashups by Sasha Frere-Jones (2005) the author had said that a legally cleared album of mashups called “Collision Course” had been on the Billboard Top Ten (para. 6). While the Grey Album is an unauthorized Mashup album, that EMI the copyright holder has ordered Danger Mouse and retailers carrying the album to cease distribution (Dolech, 2018, para. 1). Nevertheless, even though the Walt Disney Company, who is known to keep an extra-tight leash on its proprietary property and views any unauthorized use of its Disney property as stealing hadn’t pulled any of the Mashup videos, though Nickelodeon, the owners of SpongeBob, sees the humorous Mashup videos as fair use of its copyrighted content (Barnes, 2007). Yet, as Barnes had noted in the article that Mashups ‘highlights the situation mash-ups pose for media companies: are these videos parodies of cultural icons and thus protected under copyright law, or do they trample on intellectual property?’ (para. 6) The upside is that if a user creates a compelling and well-made Mashup, it can propel them to fame and stardom where before they wouldn’t get noticed. An example of this is a Stroke of Geni-us which was so good that it eventually led Freelance Hellraiser to do official remixes for Aguilera and others (Frere-Jones, 2017, para. 10).

Creativity is no longer for a few selected individuals or groups but anyone, from any part of the world, at any time, location or place can practically use any desktop, laptop, tablets, and smartphones with an internet connection to freely express themselves. Finally, newer forms of technology, apps, services and social networking sites are also continuing to develop, be created and adopted by ordinary users that further lets them explore their creative side. One of these newer and evolving platforms and social networking app is 'TikTok' which is a widely popular social media video app that allows users to create and share short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos.

References

Barnes, B. (2007, September 24). Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why? 

Retrieved October 28, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html

Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Mashup. Retrieved October 29, 2019, from

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mashup.

Dolech, M. W. (2018, June 25). EMI Traps Danger Mouse. Retrieved October 29, 2019, from 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/emi-traps-danger-mouse-114954/.

Frere-Jones, S. (2017, June 20). 1+1+1 = 1; The new math of mashups. Retrieved October 28,

2019, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/10/1-1-1-1.

Rouse, M. (2016, January). What is mash-up? - Definition from WhatIs.com. Retrieved October

29, 2019, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/mash-up.