I ask this mainly because Ive recently started indulging my creative side and have been making music, on my computer, mainly just through Logic, using samples of other songs mixed occasionally with random audio ive recorded or found on the internet. It's a lot of fun and I'm having a ball, but; how credible is it as a form of music? Like say I made something I was truly proud of and considered putting a record out, how credible is that? The samples are usually tinkered with in some way so as to render them largely unidentifiable so its not so much about clearances, more just the validity of such an artform.

I feel confused in the current climate; the Atlas Sound/Noah Lennox collaboration is one of my favourite songs of the year, and heavily sample-based. Likewise Person Pitch is one of my favourite albums but a lot of the songs are basically just samples that Noah sings over (admittedly adding a lot to it). A song like What Would I Want Sky is a positive example to me because they use the sample very creatively. A lot of current bands like Washed Out and Neon Indian are entirely sample-based; even older stuff like Daft Punk and obviously stuff like Kanye West and hip-hop in general revolves around sneaky 'borrowings' of other people's music.

So my basic question is, if music were to be released entirely composed of a mixture of samples of other people's music, how credible would that be as an artform? A compensation for a lack of musical talent, or (when done well) a sign of creativity, reworking old ideas and collaging them together to make something fresh?