(R) Mixed Genres, Collaborations & Mash Ups

Mixed Genres

Many of the music of today cannot fit into just one, traditional genre. Most songs are either a mix of genres or influenced by other genres. This allows the artist(s) to appeal to a wider audience and become more successful.

A band known for mixing music genres is The Roots. Predominantly, they are a band specialising in the rap genre, however, they mix this with light rock. This unique spin on their music allows them to stand out against other rap artists as they're appealing to fans of more than one genre.

Plan B, who orginially was a rap and grime artist, didn't have very much success with his orginial music, therefore he changed his style in order to appeal to a wider audience and become more successful and now he is one of the most successful male artists of today. Nowadays, he still stays true to his rap and grime roots, but he mixes them with a blues sound which works because of his ability to sing. Plan B has stated that he wishes to explore each genre of music possible, and then release an album for each genre explored so that he can reach out to as many people as possible.

Collaborations
A music collaboration is when different, sepeate musicians work on the same album or song.

Nelly and Tim McGraw - Over and Over (song)
Hip hop/rap star Nelly collaborated with country superstar Tim McGraw in 2004 in an attempt to blend hip hop with country music, which happen to be two completely different music genres. Nelly was quoted by Entertainment Weekly saying: "(Both musical genres) come out of poverty-stricken communities, so putting those together, it's gonna work - it just has to be done right". However, this song has since been listed as one of the worst music collaborations ever.

Jay Z and Linkin' Park - Collision Course (album)
In 2004, Jay Z (rap) and Linkin' Park (rock) came together at first to just perform one track together on MTV. However, they decided that they wanted to re-record parts of the songs to make them fit better and the band even re-recorded instrumental and vocal tracks. In the end, both Jay Z and Linkin' Park decided they wanted to release the studio tracks and the album was put together within 4 days. The album became a massive success in both the USA and the UK, attracting Linkin' Park's audience to Jay Z and vice versa. Both parties are now generating more money than they were originally and the album allowed the to reinvent themselves in order to stay current in the industry.

Florence and the Machine and Dizzee Rascal - You Got the Dirtee Love (song)
Florence and the Machine (indie pop) and Dizzee Rascal (former grime artist, but more recently mainstream rap) came together to remake and release the song You Got the Love. Originally, Florence and the Machine covered the classic song, but gave it a fresh twist and thus made it one of the biggest selling singles of 2009. During the Brits, Florence and Dizzee came together to perform the song, causing a massive storm within the music industry. With the popularity of the song buzzing, both artists decided to record and release the song as a single. In the end, it manage to sell more records than the original cover by Florence herself.

David Guetta
David Guetta is well known for this collaborations with some of the biggest artists in the music industry, such as Nicki Minaj, Flo Rida and Rihanna. He first began by remixing songs by other artists, but then he moved onto working on collaborations with other artists and then releasing the singles.

Mash Ups
Mixing two songs together is very popular too - this is known as a mash up. Mash ups are popular in bars and nightclubs, and any style of song is usually mixed with another to form a new 'dance' track. It's common to have an adapted version of one song, with an increased tempo, or adapted into a dance track in some other way, or just a mix of two completely different songs to have the same effect. Mash ups can help improve the sales of singles, as consumers will hear the remix/mash up in a nightclub, a bar or even on the radio and it will attract people to either download the original song, or even sometimes the mash up itself. In both cases, it's advertising and popularity for the original artist. Mash ups could also attract a diverse audience because fans of dance music will be introduced to different artists they don't usually listen to.

Illegal Mash Ups
As ever, there are ways for audiences to access illegal mash ups and download them for free. This can be done via www.soundcloud.com which is a website that allows the user to search for a particular song. The search results will then display all of the remixes/mash ups of that song and allows the user to even upload a version they've created. This can arise lots of copyright issues though.

There are many issues/problems like this on the internet that are causing problems for the music industry. One popular example is illegal downloading, via websites like Limewire. Illegal downloading causes a loss of revenue for the artist in question and also the music industry. Although YouTube convertors are controversial, technically they are not illegal as the user is simply converting a video file into an MP3 file, however because access to 'free' music is so easy and simple it means that less people are actually buying music.