mashups

Mashups are works created by combining elements from two or more distinct sources to produce something new. The term is used across music, software, and culture to describe remixing, cross-breeding, or repurposing existing material. In its original sense, a music mashup blends two or more pre-existing songs into a single track, often through sampling, editing, and beatmatching; the practice gained prominence in the 1990s and helped shape modern remix culture.

In computing and on the web, a mashup is an application that merges data or functionality from multiple sources via application programming interfaces (APIs) to create a new service. Typical examples layer location data with maps, weather, listings, or social feeds, often displayed on an interactive map or dashboard. Early landmark web mashups merged online maps with real estate or transit data, illustrating how public or semi-public data could be repurposed.

Beyond music and web apps, literary mashups reuse text from different authors to create new narratives, while data mashups combine datasets for analytics and visualization. The practice raises copyright, licensing, and attribution questions, since rights to underlying works may vary and terms of service may restrict reuse. The practice usually relies on clear permissions, attribution, or liberal licensing, and on data quality and provenance to maintain credibility.