
The Future of Music Genres Is Here - brianwhitman
http://blog.echonest.com/post/73516217273/the-future-of-music-genres-is-here
======
kitsune_
Ah, 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
earth.

Now, during the early 00's a lot of the old-schoolers were annoyed with the
direction drum and bass took. The tracks became cheesier and cheesier, and a
lot of the old vibe was gone.

They turned to Garage, Grime and Breaks and found a fertile playing ground in
the fledgling Dubstep scene. Lo' and behold, there it was, the fat dubby bass
of their youth.

Alas, again, an 18-year old teenager today has a very different picture of
"Dubstep" compared to that of the people who originated the sound. No more
dub, a lot of cheese. Somewhat similar to the entire drum and bass story. The
genre has been appropriated by the masses.

And well, the circle goes on and on. The same thing applies to older genres
such as "Electro", which in the 80's meant something entirely different from
what it is now.

So in a sense, how useful are genres really?

~~~
untothebreach
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.

~~~
makmanalp
No offense, but your comment reminds me all too much about the elitism that
surrounds music criticism. I listen to a wide range of metal. I, for one,
encourage the experimentation and the cross pollination with other genres.

Who really cares whether this, for example:
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry0dHtwD4TU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry0dHtwD4TU))
is metal or not? Mostly people who care more about being "fucking metal" than
music. Is it such a surprise that liking a kind of music can be about more
than just social capital?

Yes, as genres get more complex, genre labels also become more complex. And
sometimes the defining characteristics aren't clear. So what? This isn't a bad
thing. If all "prog" was the same, then it'd be boring. There'd be no point in
having yet another prog band. You'd be constrained by the label into doing a
certain thing. People rightly chose not to do that. A genre gets you 80% there
in terms of guessing what a band sounds like, and that's okay.

~~~
pistle
Seriously.. that's not metal. Just because a metal band once made a song that
sounded a little like something on that album (when they crossed over to
general acceptance) doesn't change the objective FACT that it is a sad version
of some prog rock crap from the 70's.

Javascript is not strongly typed. Nothing can change that fact.

Genres in music aren't more complex now. They are becoming more meaningless.
When the new set of kids come through and don't understand the historical
context and meaning to the way the same term lumped music tone and song
structure together, it puts on display how much "music" IS just fashion. Metal
implies a certain set of social perceptions that the listener wants to evoke,
but the correlation to the music is all gone.

Maybe someone wants to wear the metal coat of armor instead of being labelled
a pansy light-alt-rock fan, but that link is more the latter than the former.

So many times, the genres' names sound more like how someone wants to present
themselves philosophically vs. what is actually engendered in the production
of the sound being labelled. Minimal house, neurofunk, metal, death metal,
etc.

And there is no point in ever having another prog band or song. Same with jam
bands and songs.

------
edj
It 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."

~~~
brianwhitman
These genres come from people talking about music using whatever organic /
natural words they use to describe music. We've done the work to map those
into single-term "genres," as it's been shown many listeners appreciate the
flat categorization. There are similarities between genres in the API, so you
can quickly see which genres sound like others.

~~~
edj
_it 's been shown many listeners appreciate the flat categorization_

Huh, that's interesting. Did you discover that with internal analytics or a
survey, or an outside source?

If it's something internal, you could blog about your discovery. It would make
an interesting read for us music nerds.

------
scelerat
They 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.

~~~
eshvk
This is my experience with movies as well. I find the use of genres (a la
Netflix style of taste profile builder) annoying. Why should I be shoe - boxed
as a comedy movie watcher or a horror movie watcher? Maybe, I only watch
specific comedy movies that are made by Judd Apatow? Is there a genre for me
then?

On the other hand, this ingraining of genres is everywhere. Fiction for
example. Why are you supposed to be into Fantasy just because you read
Tolkien?

------
anigbrowl
According to this 'Moombahton' (a 9-day wonder that emerged about 18 months
ago after someone deliberately played a Reggaeton record at the wrong speed)
accounts for more music than 'Techno'. Sorry but 'LOL no.'

discogs.com is a much better resource for the music taxonomist.

------
samatman
Music Popcorn reminds me of a favorite idea I'll never use: a self-organizing
mp3 dj. It simply makes a weak link between any two songs that get played in
order, makes an anti-link between a song that gets skipped and the previous
song, and then makes stronger links for awhile, presuming the user is paying
attention if she's skipping songs. It gives some weight to playlists, but not
too much: if you want the playlist you play it, so we have to be careful not
to burn grooves in the network that way.

This would make the 'random' mode function better, so that when I'm listening
to relaxing music in the evening and get served bass music, skipping it makes
that less likely to happen in the future. The player itself doesn't know what
'genres' are, though it knows albums, artists, and playlists.

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lucasnemeth
If you look at the history of music as a whole, rock is not ill defined. It's
a pop music movement from the last 60 years, with a lot of similar
characteristics. Of course, it sells itself as a myriad of subgenres, because
part of it's idea as a musical movement and as a commercial product is to be
very specifically tailored to it's target audience, but "Asking for Rock is
only slightly better than 'Play me some songs that are music.'" it's not true,
from 'Play me something done in the last 2200 years from anywhere on earth' to
'Play something done from 1960 to 2013 that identifies itself as some subgenre
of the Rock family' there is an enormous difference.

------
prezjordan
I used to spend hours upon hours looking at the various genres of electronic
music using Ishkur's Guide [0].

It's funny to see how different things are today. The gray areas are much
grayer.

[0]: [http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/](http://techno.org/electronic-
music-guide/)

------
colomon
I was all prepared to be cynical about this, but their big genre diagram both
included our household's favorite obscure genre ("nl folk", ie Newfoundland
folk) and started off playing a track which was clearly in the genre but not
in our very extensive collection. Cudos to them!

------
jader201
I found it interesting that they having "Video Game Music" listed as a genre.
I'm not sure you can classify video game music under a single genre.

I listen to video game music quite a bit (some sub-genres more than others),
but you can find pretty much every genre listed here in at least one video
game.

Sure, there may be a few video games that feature music that doesn't fall into
any other "genre", but if somebody told me to describe what video game music
sounded like, I couldn't do it, like I could with most other genres.

I don't really care, I know this is just someone's interpretation of a genre.
I just found it interesting and thought it was worth mentioning.

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jcutrell
So 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. <hipsterbash> 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. </hipsterbash>

~~~
aeontech
Is the project available anywhere? I'd love to play with it!

~~~
jcutrell
Working on reinstating the domain name. I let it lapse, and it went into
redemption status.

If you'd like, you can shoot me an email (address is in my profile) and I'll
email you when it's back up and running.

------
mmahemoff
Interesting to see, as I've been working to break out the traditional "dozens
of" talk show genres into "hundreds of" with Player FM's podcast directory
([https://player.fm](https://player.fm)).

This visualisation is way cooler than my side menu though :).

I see tags are mentioned in the discussion here. Tags/keywords are great for
power users, but most people just don't think "I want to listen to X and Y
without Z". They just think "I want to listen to Electrohouse" etc.

------
thinkpad20
How is Funk Metal the biggest category of metal?

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JonnieCache
Looks interesting. Echonest have done some amazing stuff in the past.

Can anyone find a flat list of all the genres?

~~~
anonymoushn
J-core and psytrance don't exist, but progressive psytrance does and sxsw is a
genre.

[http://pastie.org/8639680](http://pastie.org/8639680)

~~~
brianwhitman
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.

------
brianwhitman
also, code examples: [http://musicmachinery.com/2014/01/16/new-genre-
apis/](http://musicmachinery.com/2014/01/16/new-genre-apis/)

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madb
How do you categorize someone like Los Amigos Invisibles?

