Being a Music Industry minor, I hear a lot about current conflicts and controversies in the business. One such debate revolves around the whole mashup artist issue. If you don’t know what a mashup artist is, it’s basically someone who combines samples, beats, and tunes from multiple songs into one new super-song. (As an example, the first one I ever heard mixed Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Oasis’ Wonderwall, and Aerosmith’s Dream On. It was pretty sweet.)

Being a mashup artist is a cool hobby to be sure, but the problem comes when artists such as Girl Talk start selling their albums and making money without consent from the owners of the many many copyrighted materials they use.

This has led to quite a few lawsuits and debates on if and how a mashup artist could be fairly compensated for his or her work. I honestly don’t know what a good resolution would be, but I recently came across a video that clearly showed the importance of mashups to our culture and the fine art they produce.

So, without further adieu, I give you mashup perfection: