Blog: Idolator

The non-music media loves to write about mash-ups, because it allows them to talk about the niche concern of pop music without much discussing music at all. Because mash-up artists use existing songs, journalists trade the difficulty of understanding new artists for reliable classics. They can talk about all the non-musical aspects of music—MP3s, piracy, copyright, major labels, downloading, iPods, etc—and they don't look like the kind of old fuddy-duddies who champion bands that sound like the bands they themselves loved when they were young, such as Dr. Dog and Wilco. [...]