Stop Being Broken

Music Genres

Sunday, 28th September 2008

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Music category names are out of control.

• Here’s a Google Spreadsheet of a few different lists of genres to consult

Should independent musicians all use the same set of genres to categorize their music?

• Yes, it would sure make the consumer's life easier
• No, variety is the spice of life

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Tags: categories, genres, music

5 Comments to “Music Genres”

1. JT says:

   1 October 2008 at 10:08 pm

   You have a good point, and it does make alot of sense when you are trying to find the music that you are interested in, but I know I always smiled when I heard TMBG as intellectual rock which makes sense, but impractical to keep them in this Genre, because let’s face it.. how much music out there would be called that, and what would qualify as it?

   These other Genres are to let bands stand out and be there our selves.. and also to make sure they can’t be found by any customer that might want to listen to their music..:-)

   But that’s must my option.. I’m probably wrong.

   Reply
2. PR says:

   20 December 2008 at 11:52 am

   Bach’s music is not classical, it’s Baroque. And Beethoven is Classical (not romantic). And, these terms (Baroque, Romantic, Classical) mean a lot more than simply a music genre.

   Reply
3. Nixonspawn says:

   22 January 2009 at 9:57 pm

   Classifying music can be problematic because any styl can be technically dissected to a ridiculous degree. I think this is what happens when hipsters start spewing terms like alterna-jizrock and hardcore-Buddhist-death-metal; they’re trying to define something to a ridiculous degree. Keep genres general and simple. Any more specific classification should be simply the artists name (or lack of name?)and thus unique to the artist. What the hell is The Bloodhound Gang anyway? Skater-toilet-redneck-rap-jizmack-rock?

   Reply
4. Joshua Works says:

   24 May 2009 at 5:56 pm

   Why are we still even trying to force music into single bins of categorization? A finite, standardized list of genres is not the solution! The goal should not be to reproduce a CD store’s organization abilities. We have things called tags these days whereby we can apply any number of standard or non-standard labels to music. We don’t need to build a new bucket and label it Christian Gangsta Ska, when you could just apply the tags “christian gangsta ska” and have it indexable by any of those terms.

   The more important truth is that music was never discretely classifiable, anyway; music by nature is an amalgamation of influences, all of which should be represented by a “genre” categorization. “Rock”, as it turns out, is be completely unhelpful as an organizational label.

   There are many more serious problems with genres than the one you mention in your video (which, I gather, is basically that there’s a lot of non-standard ones). For example, why am I compelled to stick all of my Christmas music into a “Holiday” genre, when that really has little to do with the genre. And why have we effectively doubled all our genres by allowing a “Christian” version? “Christian” is not a genre.

   This is something I’m kind of passionate about and have been wanting to write about for a while. I will write a longer, more thought-out response at my website.

   Reply
5. Bryan says:

   24 May 2009 at 6:28 pm

   Joshua,

   I’m glad to see there are other passionate people out there. There are times when I like categories, and times when I like tags, and times when I like both.

   Who should be in charge of tagging music? Should it be (for example) Apple and Amazon employees, or just the users, or both? Or maybe just a subset of the users who have proven an ability to tag well?

   I worry about a system that uses only tags from users, in the event that a song would end up with just “alternarock, fusion”, ’cause then I’d never find it.

   Reply