Looks interesting. Echonest have done some amazing stuff in the past. Can anyone find a flat list of all the genres?
J-core and psytrance don't exist, but progressive psytrance does and sxsw is a genre.
The Future of Music Genres Is Here
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital T'was ever thus. Don't forget that acid/tekno/jungle was itself stepping on other peoples' shoes, namely the UKs established dancehall/ragga soundsystems: http://www.uncarved.org/blog/2004/06/4/17/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-o_N9rCujM EDIT: jungle was also briefly referred to as "future ragga"! imagine how many people that must have pissed off, even in '92: http:/…
Makes me think of the Clash dissing Paul Weller and the Jam for not being punk ("they got Burton suits, they think it's funny, turning rebellion into money"). That tension between style and righteousness.
This is on Wikipedia, but there's no source:
"...a jibe at an unnamed group who wear Burton suits, taken by many to be The Jam (though in an NME article of the time, Strummer claimed the actual target was the power pop fad hyped by journalists as the next big thing in 1978) and the lyric concludes that the new groups are in it solely to be famous and for the money."
I also thought it was aimed at the Jam, as it was right after they (the Jam) announced they were voting conservative.
However, looking back... well, the Clash also turned rebellion into money. They of course kept themselves more real, and they were way less packaged, but still.
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#23Ah, genres. In the 90's, I was into Breakbeat Hardcore and then later Jungle, which transformed into Drum & Bass, which was subdivided over time into Ragga, Neurofunk, Tech Step, Hard Step, Jump-Up, Clown Step, Liquid Funk, Ambient Drum & Bass, Drumstep and so on. Of course, what I understand under "Drum & Bass" is very different from a 18 year-old teenager who thinks late-period Pendulum is the greatest thing on ear…
I see the same thing happening in metal. When I was in highschool, there were a few genres -- mostly 'thrash/speed', 'death', 'black', 'progressive' and maybe a couple more. In college I kind of got away from metal, and in my late 20's got back into it. After getting back into it, I thought "what the hell happened?!!?" There are now so many genres, I don't even know where to start. The hardcore punk of the 80's and 90's was now a legitimate "metal" genre, and every band that had even a hint of hardcore in it got "-core" added to their label. So now you have 'thrashcore' 'deathcore', and my favorite, 'metalcore'. Hardcore was originally supposed to designate a band that was a punk band that incorporated metal aspects into their songs. So it was already a mix of metal and punk, so what the hell is 'metalcore' supposed to be?? A metal band with aspects of punk, I suppose, but I still think the label sucks.
Then you have 'progressive' added to anything that isn't consistently in 4-4 time. Or the even dumber label, 'math metal'. There are even subgenres of prog now, including the dumbest sounding name ever, 'Djent,' which is supposed to be the sound that an extended range guitar makes when palm muting a low string through some shitty digital distortion.
I don't even want to get into the "post-" prefix either. The first time you see a redditor talk about the "post-hardcore progressive deathcore" band they love, you feel like shooting yourself in the face.
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#24So I used the Echonest API on my final masters project, which created a shared music taste profile based on people in a given location, and used Echonest's built in smart playlist to play music in the space.
As a part of the application, I also built a D3 visualization quite similar to the one in this article for the tastes of the individuals and the tastes of the location.
It's amazing how much you can learn about a person's taste, given the combination of their genre tastes. For instance, you can safely assume that if the person likes hipster-electro-pop, their love for old western twang country might be out of irony.
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#25Ah, genres. In the 90's, I was into Breakbeat Hardcore and then later Jungle, which transformed into Drum & Bass, which was subdivided over time into Ragga, Neurofunk, Tech Step, Hard Step, Jump-Up, Clown Step, Liquid Funk, Ambient Drum & Bass, Drumstep and so on. Of course, what I understand under "Drum & Bass" is very different from a 18 year-old teenager who thinks late-period Pendulum is the greatest thing on ear…
> So in a sense, how useful are genres really?
Philosophically, an answer is probably is above my pay grade. That said, time has always been a factor to how we understand and label music. Rock today is very different from Elvis, but that doesn't mean we need to throw out genres as a classification system.
Practically speaking, as paying a Spotify user, I really dislike their "browse new releases" tool. Browsing by genre, even some basic ones, would be a HUGE improvement. And, I'd love to follow a micro-genre or two.
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#26It seems like tags might be a better solution to classifying music than over-broad categories like "rock". Making genres more specific and granular just makes categorization more confusing and contentious. But use of multiple tags to categorize a song could allow different people to simultaneously apply the labels they prefer. Or perhaps a better solution would be "x sounds like y, z, etc."
Tags are awesome. But, they often end up completely unrelated to musical elements, and purely related to personal or cultural connections.
Take a look at some of the weird tags you can find on Last.fm. It's valuable, but different than "categorization." It's more like "relationship."
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#27It seems like tags might be a better solution to classifying music than over-broad categories like "rock". Making genres more specific and granular just makes categorization more confusing and contentious. But use of multiple tags to categorize a song could allow different people to simultaneously apply the labels they prefer. Or perhaps a better solution would be "x sounds like y, z, etc."
Some bands cross genres quite comfortably. One of my own bands does some material that is basically "If Lilith Fair had a prog band" (so both progressive rock and "Lilith"), but other material that is straight up parody in the Weird Al style ("filk" or "dementia", neither of which I found on the list).
The problem isn't with genres, it's with trying to put bands in them.
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#28Looks interesting. Echonest have done some amazing stuff in the past. Can anyone find a flat list of all the genres?
J-core and psytrance don't exist, but progressive psytrance does and sxsw is a genre. http://pastie.org/8639680
psytrance is there, as "psychedelic trance"
we're adding j-core now, thanks for the suggestion!
sxsw is why this is special, we will be adding and changing these over time. It's clear that genres don't have to directly correlate with musical style.
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#29Ah, genres. In the 90's, I was into Breakbeat Hardcore and then later Jungle, which transformed into Drum & Bass, which was subdivided over time into Ragga, Neurofunk, Tech Step, Hard Step, Jump-Up, Clown Step, Liquid Funk, Ambient Drum & Bass, Drumstep and so on. Of course, what I understand under "Drum & Bass" is very different from a 18 year-old teenager who thinks late-period Pendulum is the greatest thing on ear…
They're useful on a personal level but not on a broader level.
When you want to listen to some Drum & Bass, you already have a personal classification of the music style and artists that you're looking for. It's going to be different from someone getting into that genre right now but if you wanted to listen to what they wanted to listen to, I'm guessing you already have some personal term for it (Nu, progressive, modern vs classic, ect.).
When talking to other people and using music services, that all breaks down and you usually start going by similar artists or meaningful tags. Similar artists is an inefficient way to classify your music (both in your mind and in your folders) and meaningful tags works but requires significant effort to actually keep them 'correct' (and if they're not correct and just for personal use, you might as well use genre's).
Re: The Future of Music Genres Is Here
#30They pretty much nail the limitations of "genre" in the second paragraph. It's a blunt way to organize a record store, when you can only group physical products one way.
Genres are deeply ingrained in people's heads, but they're a vestige from record stores and radio stations with limited playlists targeted at specific mass-market demographic points. The more you listen and explore on your own, the less meaningful they are.
Sure, people say things like, "well I'm listening to a lot of jazz these days." They might even specify "bebop." But those tags are only slightly meaningful, and as others have illustrated in the comments, it's still limited and misleading. And whatever tag you decide to use has a different meaning for everyone who uses it.
Listen to serious record collectors or music aficionados talk about music... nobody really talks about genres. They talk about bands and musicians and songs. And many of the relationships between the bands and musicians and songs they're talking about span or confound most notions of "genre."
When it comes to products which use music genres, I think they serve best as boot-strapping discovery tools for people who don't know much about music. They're good for the person who comes in saying "I don't know anything about Country music." Having a section that presents some "definitive" (yes scare quotes) Country music might be helpful. As people develop their own tastes, genres become not so useful.
I've worked at three different companies, one concert promoter and two streaming music services, where "genre" was deemed to be an important component of the presentation or the product. And 3 out of 3 implementations I've seen only resulted in contention and dissatisfaction. It always came down to one person or small group of people defining categories so hopelessly inadequate that nobody who cared about music was really happy with them. In the end very few customers used features which depended on grouping things by genre, and algorithmic suggestions ended up being much more highly favored.
Anyway, my general opinion is "genres suck." I'm glad EchoNest is tackling it dynamically and providing an API for it. Maybe it will improve the experience for products which have focused on the experience of browsing Genres.