With 6,000 genres on Spotify, and 100s more added every year, are they now pointless?
An interesting read from the Beeb.
FWIW, I remove the genre tag from my files.
There’s always been a gym phonk element to our music
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I’ve always been a big fan of Algorithmic Grime Mix…
So the clever money is clearly to ‘lump on’ genre.
Glad to see that Ace Records’ website is rigorously divided up into genres, and long may it continue.
As it happens, I spent a couple of hours the other day, removing some of the stoopid genre categories from my digitised music library. Still loads more to go.
I’m tempted to just have four categories in future. Music (i.e. my accumulated albums and odd tracks), Podcasts, Radio Shows and Mixtapes (i’e. continuous mixes of music curated by others).
This seems like the way forward.
According to my Spotify Unwrapped I listened to a mere 49 genres this year. Lightweight.
That’s probably 48 more than me.
No group from 1966 would have called their music “freakbeat”. Likewise no funk band would have described themselves as “rare groove” or “acid jazz”. Some genre names seem to die off and get subsumed into whatever buzzword suits the zeitgeist.
What genre did the Beatles consider themselves in when they recorded Revolver? Same question with Bowie circa “Hunky Dory”?
Not sure what I’m trying to say other than – pigeonholing. However, whoever came up with Toytown and sunshine pop has my gratitude. Ditto Landfill Indie, for another reason.
The Beatles up to and including Help! are pop. Thereafter they are Rock. Or Baroque Pop. Or Folk Rock. Or Pastoral. Or Tragical-historical-pastoral.
Not Rock, obviously – I agree with all the others you listed.
My guess is they saw themselves as a Pop Group right up to the White album, or possibly the Hey Bulldog session, at which point like many others they became a Rock Band. Same with Stones Beggar’s, Who Tommy, Kinks Victoria, and a bit late, the Tremeloes Master.
I agree, apart from one thing: seeing is not the same as being.
They saw themselves as a pop group – and they WERE a pop group.
You say they became a Rock band – but I would contend that they didn’t: they just SAW themselves as a Rock band from that point.
Agreed and much better put
Similarly Northern Soul and World Music. No artist would set out to make music with either label.
This is where genres can be used in marketing to hide a multitude of sins. Northern Soul compos are mostly made up of “any old crap we could get our hands on”. World music could well involve pan-pipes. *shudder*
Yamaha DX7 panpipes at that.
I think if there were only three songs on Spotify there would be 4 genres.
Arf!
Roon is particularly annoying on genres.
My copy of Art Pepper’s Meets the Rhythm Section has six: Cool, Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Post-Bop, Saxophone Jazz, West Coast. That’ll be jazz when I’ve finished with it…
Bert Jansch is Blues, British Folk, British Folk-Rock, Folk, Folk-Blues, Folk-Rock, Psychedelic/Garage (?), Traditional Folk. That’ll be folk, then.
Bonnie Raitt is Adult Contemporary, Album Rock, Blues, Blues-Rock, Contemporary Pop/Rock, Country-Rock, Pop-Rock, Slide Guitar Blues. Just Rock, I think.
I don’t feel inclined to get rid of genres altogether, for those times when I feel in the mood for an afternoon of jaaaz…
UPDATE: Roon doesn’t recognise just plain Rock. I’m inclined to call it Krautrock – that’ll show ’em.
Bonnie gets filed under blues for me. Even when she isn’t. My problem is whether to file several of my records under Folk or Electronica. Folk wins, usually.
That’s why I only use my own genre tags in Roon. Even then there are too many but at least I’ve no-one else to blame.
I’ve been poor at genre labelling my music so that results of a search based on that field is worse than useless, and slow.
Added to this I use different software to listen depending on where I am, and they treat genre tags differently, and there seems to be no standard for delimiters between them.
It’s been very slightly annoying so I think I will follow Fentonsteve, take the plunge and delete all my tag data too.
Some of them make my stomach churn. “Alternative Rock” for example… Redolent of 90s MTV . It’s probably things like Stiltskin and Korn and the bloody Spin Doctors. Yecccch.
When folks say they like “Jazz”, I often play them Livery Stable Blues by The Original Dixieland Jass Band. That clarinet could strip paint. Same thing would work with with Ornette Coleman.
Still jazz though…it’s not for civilians’ benefit, it’s for ours. Mind you, if someone told me they liked Adult Contemporary Rock, I’d kick ’em out of the house.
My 50s/60s/70s Allsorts mixes are an attempt to get away from genre tribalism. Looking at the listening figures, the 50s and 60s ones go down quite well, but the 70s ones don’t as much. Perhaps 1970s onwards, the listening divides widened. Here’s my latest 60s Allsorts.
Ooh, lovely. I have some tedious database mangling to do, so that’s today’s soundtrack sorted.