I personally enjoy listening to mashups and remixes because it is a unique way of listening and enjoying all the parts of songs that I like. I usually find a video of a mashup on YouTube and play it when I’m driving or trying to relax because it is easier to have those bits and pieces of music together into one streaming video than having to look up separate songs every time one finishes.

I appreciate the beats and undertones of various rhythms in these videos and songs because they bring forward new feelings and conveys new emotions for the full version of the song whose fragments were used. I do not consider myself a musician or knowledgeable enough to tell what goes on in a song but I appreciate the aesthetics of music. Remixes of old songs are interesting to me because I enjoy listening to the new beats and runs of the song. I’ll listen to something as long as it sounds good.

I thought it was interesting that RiP: A Remix Manifesto brought up the idea of copyright infringement when discussing the production of a mashup or remix. I always thought that violating a copyright agreement meant you had to use the product as a whole. Making mashups and remixes do not seem to violate my view of what it means to steal someone’s work because you are essentially creating a whole new product with unique underlying music that is different than the original piece.

Haven’t we reached the point where these “violations” are so cumbersome that it would become nonexistent? If I made a song and over 1,000 people were to use bits and pieces of it into their own individual mashup, I would just forget about the violations because it would be too much hassle to go through and charge each person for every bit and piece of my song that they used.

In the video it is said that those who are the original producers are part of the past and that they want to limit the control of their work. The original creators do not want others to republish what they have done because they feel that these new users are taking credit for something they never actually made. In some ways I agree with that statement because the creators of the mashups and remixes have transformed something that was in a sense “old” into something “new” and innovative. I understand the need to be protective over your work; however, deconstructing a song to make it into something new is completely different that using the original song as is. And sometimes depending on how well the tracks were manipulated, these new audio files end up sounding much better than the original in my opinion.

Personally I would be honored to have someone bring forth my music into the new generations because it shows that what I originally created was good enough to be long lasting in the world’s audience. I think that people should continue to create mashups without having to worry about legal actions being taken against them.