DAVID BOWIE is embracing the latest music piracy craze by offering his fans the chance to take apart and rebuild his greatest hits.

“Mash-ups” is the name given to underground club hits that are outselling mainstream CDs faster than record company lawyers can remove them from record shops and the internet. Any aspiring bedroom DJ with access to basic computer sampling software can produce a mash-up.

It involves stealing the vocal line from one track and “mashing” it together with the beats and backing track from an unlikely musical partner.

The track judged the best mash-up by Bowie will be released as an MP3 single on the Apple iTunes website. The winner will receive £6,000 of music software and possibly an offer of a legitimate record deal.

The mash-up method has resulted in one of the most sought-after albums this year, which has not appeared in the charts but sent shockwaves through the record industry. An underground American DJ called Danger Mouse (Brian Burton to his lawyers) fused songs by the Beatles and the rapper Jay-Z to dazzling effect.

The Grey Album mixed the Fab Four’s White Album with Jay-Z’s The Black Album. Critics praised the collage of Revolution #9 with the hip-hop star’s vocals.

However, EMI’s lawyers forced the album off the internet — but only after one million fans had downloaded the recording.

Burton used a £300 software package called Acid Pro to take apart every drum beat, vocal and guitar line from the Beatles’ album.

“I don’t want to disrespect the Beatles,” said Burton. “It is an art form. It is music. It doesn’t have to be just what some people call stealing. It can be a lot more than that.”

The most successful mash-up partnerships have seen rap star Missy Elliott tied to Love Will Tear Us Apart by the Mancunian gloomsters Joy Division, Christina Aguilera mixed with garage rockers the Strokes and Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 forced to work with the Norwegian techno band Royksopp. The tracks are made by finding a cappella vocal lines from popular hits, which are often available as MP3 files on the internet. Music-editing software allows a bedroom DJ to mix the vocal line with the instrumental section of another record, which can be looped continuously. The new tracks are then pressed on to “white label” discs which can be played by club DJs and sold in independent record stores. A track can go on to become an international hit thanks to filesharing music websites.

With record companies already suffering a slump, which they blame on illegal downloading of music, and mash-ups firing the imagination of fans, some artists, such as Bowie, have decided that the best course of action is to co-operate with bedroom DJs.

EMI has already signed up Richard X, a British creator of several illegal mash-ups, to steer him towards legitimate hit-making. He produced a No 1 single for the Sugababes by mixing Gary Numan with the R&B singer Adina Howard.

On the Bowienet website fans can download music software that allows tracks from any CD to be edited, mixed and mangled out of recognition. The rules of the competition say that a new track must be produced from Bowie classics mashed-up with one from his latest album, Reality. Bowie told The Times: “Mash-ups were a great appropriation idea just waiting to happen. I first heard of them when 2 Many DJs (the Belgian duo who reinvented Dolly Parton) put out their album a year or so ago and have been following the evolution avidly ever since. Being a hybridmaker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.”

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