Celebrating its second year, 5FM's collaborative local music series, MashLab has brought Sony Mobile on board as its main sponsor, and rebranded the venture as the Xperia MashLab. A uniquely South African music feature, the Xperia Mashlab takes input from local music fans to bring together some of the country's most innovative and up-and-coming music acts to create a proudly South African song. Added to this, is the opportunity for fans to design artwork for the newly crafted tracks, culminating in a MashLab album of collaborative songs.

“Song writing is an organic process and by bringing fans Xperia MashLab, we are giving them access to the most vulnerable space of any artist - the space in which they create their art,” says MashLab founder, Jon Savage. He adds that “,this is a project that I am very proud to be extending on the back of the successful first MashLab season.”

All the content created for Xperia MashLab will be broadcast across on 5FM during the Forbes and Fix Show between 13h00 and 16h00, and will be available for download exclusively through the Xperia Lounge app available on Google Play for Android smartphones or tablets (Android OS 2.3 or later). Included for a limited period will be all the Xperia MashLab tracks as well as some behind-the-scenes footage of the production process from all of the collaborations.

For owners of Sony’s Xperia Z3 (review) smartphone or Z3 Tablet Compact (review), the MashLab tracks will be also available in High Resolution Audio.