ACT I - Fear of a Mashed Planet
In 1999, a software engineer named Shawn Fanning unleashed a piece of software that changed the world: Napster. This software allowed any music fan to connect to another music fan and trade their entire record collection. The result was a generation raised with the idea that they could have instant access to mankinds entire history of recorded music.
At the same time, a new genre of music was being created on the dancefloors and bedrooms of London - the mashup. These songs represented the new media landscape created by the Internet - the relationship between fans and artists was blurred - the fan was now the artist. And while they were the latest version of the age old artistic practice of appropriation, the mashup was truly a product of its time.
The brilliance of mashups is that at the same time that they’re clever and catchy, they lay bare the disposable interchangeability of pop songs. The fact that any fan can slam two songs together proves that the 4-4 beat versus/chorus/verse formula hasn’t changed in over half a century. Mashups parody the industry and challenge it to change, while working within the same medium they criticize. It’s culture jamming you can dance to.
And at the same time that these mashups criticize the culture bankruptcy of modern pop, they are also a hint as to what the future of music will look like. Mashups are, after all, what the Internet is all about: participation, rather than consumption. They’re about fans building on the work of others, interacting with their culture, and a return to an idea of a shared heritage that we haven’t seen since folk music. With digital music, the fans are in charge, the bands are in a two-way relationship, and the labels aren’t invited to the party.
