In music, a mashup is a new song that is mixed from the vocal and instrumental tracks from two different source songs. A mashup on the internet is pretty much the same thing. It is when take information from one website, and then you take information from another website/app, in order to make a whole new product. According to the reading Mashups: The New Breed of Web Ap”, there are different genres of mashups. There is the mapping mashups, video and photo mashups, search and shopping mashups, and news mashups. I found it interesting that mashups have their own categories.
One example of a mashup is when Brian Burton came up with the idea to blend Jay-Z’s cappella version of The Black Album for remixers with the Beatles famous The White Album and make They Grey Album. This mashup caused a lot of controversy. Brian Burton was hit with a cease-and-desist letter. The problem with mashups sometimes is that it can bring up the subject of copyright infringement.
In my opinion, mashups are cool but I feel as if it lacks creativity. Instead of taking information from several other sources, why not come up with your own data and create something completely new, that no one has ever heard of. There are a lot of pros and cons when it comes to mashups and it brings a lot of attention, some good and some bad.
