Genre is Dying (and that's a good thing) 

They alway say they listen to everything, but no one listens to polka. Justice for polka.

I've been finding “what have you been listening to recently?” a superior question than the mentioned ‘what sort of music do you like?’. Better conversation starter too I feel.

This reminds me of how my mother's main playlists are titled "Fun" and "Car", which don't consider genre at all just what the playlist is supposed to be used for

Umm no.. in fact, this video is post-progressive technical blackened grind industrial noise soft-core….

Linda Martell said: "Genres are a funny little concept, aren't they? Yes, they are In theory, they have a simple definition that's easy to understand But in practice, well, some may feel confined"

I think you’re 98% right… the only thing you’re missing is the loss of community. It wasn’t solely antagonistic. I like live music… I’ve gone to a lot of Midwest emo, shoegaze, screamo, hardcore and punk shows and it’s like the same 50 people at every show. That creates a scene and scenes create new music. People bouncing ideas off each other, competing, and slowly progressing their music towards something. Without that community and with the internet, you get that progression, but it’s from anywhere without a historically natural progression… so an artist will have a pirate rock song then a merengue hip hop track… or whatever. Also… yeah, I noticed a few years back that the focus shifted from the artist and their art to the listener. I still listen to albums exclusively, because I like hearing the whole idea. Its importance has diminished greatly because a lot of artists write songs now, not albums, but… old habits. Now, with a few exceptions, it seems that the artist generally means nothing to people, just if they have a song that fits a playlist. Maybe thats part of the reason why we haven’t had the new bands be as successful as some of the legacy bands.

Regarding the emergence of new genres, consider how technology lead to most of those new developments. Cheap guitars in the 50's led to rock'n'roll, turntables through the 70's-80's led to hip-hop, computers in the 80's-90's led to electronic music. Each of these genres adds a "letter" in the alphabet of music which can combine with any other to create new hybrids the same way 26 letters in English can combine into virtually infinite writings. I think we're also just on the cusp of electronic music truly evolving, it's still essentially in its infancy.

I am firmly of the opinion that when people say "oh, i don't listen to X, it all sounds the same", what they mean isn't that--the human ear is a very sensitive instrument, of course we can distinguish sounds--but rather "there's a thing happening in X that doesn't work for me, and it happens consistently." I'd just like it if more people introspected a little and figured out what the thing is so i can make better recommendations.

During the pandemic I made a playlist that I could use around my house and it had 2 rules: can I play the song around my kids and does the song compel me to groove? Growing up in the 80's/90's genre was a huge part of middle school and high school but if you looked at my CD binder (that's how old I am) you'd see Billy Joel sitting next to Metallica, Nirvana, Hootie and the Blowfish, John Coltrane and Tool. If I liked something I'd listen to it. When people ask me today "what kind of music do you listen to?" I say that I listen to anything; if I can groove to it then I'll give it a chance. Give hyperpop a chance, 100 Gecs, Charlie XCX, AG Cook were how I started.

When I was a teenager in the 90s, me and my friends quietly judged people who said things like, “I listen to everything,” or, “I listen to whatever is on the radio,” because it seemed indecisive, like they didn’t have any real passion for music. Nowadays though, we all listen to everything. I started really noticing the breakdown of genre boundaries back in the MySpace days. That’s when I feel we started seeing lots of cross pollination

One useful reference here is Wittgenstein, who pondered on the act of categorization a lot. His example was not of genres but that of games and how would one define it. He'd find a definition of the word game, then come up with a counter example. The key takeaway for me, is that whatever categorization you make, you're the one making it. The genre is not inherent in the work itself, but reveals itself when we categorize it into that genre. On some occasions, the categorization can actually reveal more about the categoriser than about the thing categorized itself.

I've notice 3 things when discussing this with younger people: - a group of "everything", which actually listens heavily to a lot of different stuff and it's awesome (not huge) - a group of "everything" which listens to music as background noise all the time. This is a big group, and the "everything" is often a bunch of generic stuff. - algorithm driven "super specifics". Like I met a 19 year old girl who loved shoegaze and listened to everything shoegaze in a line starting in the 80s and little else. The algorithm gives similar stuff, and in a very linear way.

As someone who listens to a lot of classical music, I’ve always found that the opus system of labeling is really convenient and works in a similar way that genre labels do. It relies on the audience having a lot of background knowledge (which genre does also) and uses that to give a lot of information about a piece of music before it’s even listened to. For example, I could see a name like “Alexander Scriabin’s Piano Concerto in F Sharp Minor, op. 20”, and rather than being given the information that it’s just “classical music”, which could mean anything, I know that it features a symphony orchestra with a piano soloist, it likely has 3 main divisions called “movements” which likely follow a “fast slow fast” pattern, it follows a line of Russian tradition, it’s likely late Romantic in style, and if I know a decent bit of stuff about Scriabin, I know that it’s written in his early period, which contains a lot of Chopin influence. It fulfills the same function of genre, but it can be clearly defined, and while you have to make guesses about what the music will be like beforehand, they can still be pretty well educated guesses.

I remember in junior high, my metal friends could not listen to anything else. I’m like dude that’s your loss, I’ll listen to Megadeth, U2, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and Tina Turner. Now it’s even wider than that! 30 years later.

I think the importance of genre at this point is as a means of language. As a broad idea rather than a rigid set of checkboxes.

The reason for the common answer "a little bit of everything" is simply because today, Pop Music encompasses many genres. Pop Music is just a shortened form for Popular Music and that will include everything from Taylor Swift, The Weekend, Justin Bieber, or as much as the fans might hate to admit it bands like Slipknot or Metallica. If it shows up on the radio or in a Spotify top 100 playlist, it's pop(ular) music even if it might also falls into a more specific subgenre, metal, hip-hop, electronic, or traditional pop.

I've been arguing the same thing for a few years. I'm a high school teacher, and my students all basically listen to everything.

I was a DJ on a comunity radio station for a while. I liked to point out that the "loops" of minimalist classical music were very like the loops of hip hop. Music is about feelings. Don't we all feel all feelings? Great video as usual.

Nice take on rhe genre topic. I dont think genre, as a definition, is going away. Its still effective in a description mode. As a 71 year old, my music listening choices has always been eclectic and eccentric as opposed to most of my friends. But thats ok. Thanks for the video. I miss your informative and entertaining takes on music here on RU-vid.

I'd argue genres are still important, and always will be. Sure, people may listen to a bit of everything moreso than previous generations, but when you find one thing in particular that really connects with you, having a genre is an essential signpost for finding similar music.

I can't find the exact quote, but I believe Tom Barman of dEUS once said something like 'we didn't grow up with a musical tradition, we grew up with record stores'.

New polyphonic, let’s get into it

I am an old man and have read and heard this my whole life. There maybe a movement of people liking more genres but people will always have their favorites and defend them.

I think genre has some advantages. It makes looking for similar music easier.

As somebody who still primarily listens to music on physical media or purchased mp3s genre is most useful when it's like "Oh, you enjoy Crocodile Boy? You may also want to check out Alligator Lad." But I remember the 90s, I remember how cordoning yourself off into explicit subcultures really 1) divided people who otherwise would've gotten on just fine and 2) narrowed your own experience of great art. I was a punk/ska kid, took me a long time to get into hip hop even thought I *grew up during its golden age* so yeah I basically agree with the main takeaway here.

fuck genres, I just put all my music into one gigantic 52 hour long playlist containing everything I like

I'm definitely with you on the "playlist by feel" thing Poly. Since I was a little kid I'd pick what songs I wanted to listen to based on either how I was feeling or what daydream with my favorite fictional character I wanted to have that day (this is still true as a 31 yr old autistic woman). I'll group a bunch of different types of music together if I want an "early spring rainy day" feel, or a "spooky slightly haunted antique store" vibe, or even "the slightly sad feeling you get when you feel Fall coming after a great summer". Or "playlist for this specific anime character but only reflecting their feelings from this certain scene" lol. I think instead of asking people "what genres do you like?" we should ask them "what are your favorite moods of music?"

I'd argue that geography played the most important factor in shaping a genre outside the south. Ask anyone in 1991 where to find Grunge, Country or Rap & hip-hop, we'd all know. It was the internet that removed geographic boundaries in music. Its only now with a modern academic influence, would someone place as the main historical reason.

Wow, this is absolutely spot on. Thank you, Noah! I am a music student in my late 50s who started studying music in my mid 50s, but even in my early stage of my learning, it’s catalyzed an already long ongoing process that's making lines between genres and the definition of each genre become less and less clear, and far less important. I could go on for a long time on this topic, but you've covered it very well. One thing it brings me back to is the definition of music that YOU gifted to me in your podcast with Cory: Music is that which we experience as music. I've expanded that to where it is equally applicable and appropriate - at least for me it is - to substitute the word “art” for the word “music” in your keen conclusion. I've also contracted it to the point at which I feel it’s superbly useful when I substitute any music genre for the word music. I don't pretend this means all genres, definitions, and cateogories are therefore meaningless. If someone recommends a band they like and describes their music style as funky jazz, my mind isn't going to expect them to sound like Megadeath, etc. But as I progress in my journey as a music student, and for decades before that as a music listener, I don't experience music in genres or labels, and I freaking love it. You are a genuine treasure, Noah, and a wonderful artist.

I have a Spotify playlist called “hammered & sad” (German: “traurig & besoffen”) and it exclusively includes tracks that used to make me cry when I got drunk during the Covid pandemic in lockdown. There’s Weltschmerz-oozing German and Austrian rap next to desperation-inducing Scottish indie rock, Swedish why-can’t-the-good-old-times-last-forever EDM, British bassdrum-stomping-and-banjoing-through-another-breakup-folk and Italian sleep-through-the-static neoclassical/film music. After watching this video, the playlist makes even more sense to me.

Completely agree. I was born in 1992 and I so grew up in a time where genre was still a core part of how people defined their musical taste. Yet I have always struggled to answer the question "what music do you like?" because my music taste has always been based on qualities that don't neatly fit into genres. For example, two of my favourite songs are "Livin' on a Prayer" and "Heaven is a Place on Earth". I love both songs for very similar reasons and there are a lot of similarities between the songs, with the choruses having similar chord progressions, bass lines, overall melodic contours and production. Yet the first is labelled as hard rock and/or glam metal while the other is listed as pop rock even though, to me, Livin' on a Prayer is far more similar to Heaven is a Place on Earth than it is to, say You Shook Me All Night Long.

Some genres seem to merge into new genres, while the names of other genres get replaced with a new label. Disco was rebranded as "dance" music. The popular drum pattern from funk music seems to have been taken by old Hip-Hop music. Japanese City Pop seems to be inspored by disco and funk from the 1970s and that became popular 1980s Japanese music. Now some people are rediscovering old disco or funk songs even from other countries and calling it "City Pop".

Tl;dr I'm 30. My whole life I've been connected to music, I did music, I worked with music, but never get to really listen to music per se. Had couple favorite songs on my listening device and I would change them every year or two. Until four years ago pandemic happen, had a lot of time to spend and decided to really get to know modern music, to really delve into it and have at least basic knowledge. Genres and sub-genres were MASSIVELY helpful to understand not only strictly modern music market, but many, many, many things in songs that I've known all my life. Origins of some sounds enabled me to appreciate a lot of music, that I would otherwise find weird if not strictly bad. I think using genres to talk about music can be beneficial to listener, but one thing is necessary - you cannot think about them as something set in stone. Whole music can be portrayed as spectrum of sounds and vibes that go with them. If genres are only spots or areas on this spectrum, it puts some order to this massive phenomenon, at least for me.

I just like music that I like

A great example of genres no longer defining groups, bands, or individuals now adays is the fact that most groups don't feel the need to tie themselves to one genre anymore. Some groups experiment album to album. Others even go song to song. A great example of this is a wonderful band I found called TWRP. Each album tries to be something slightly new but still their style. They have a synthwave album, a jazz album, and even a drum and guitar driven album. Lincoln Park did this same thing when they shifted their music with some of their newer albums. Some old fans of the band disliked the new sound while others embraced it. This new age of being "what you want" has really blurred lines across genres. You make music that is what you want to make, regardless of the inspiration that it may come from. It is still your style, your take on that inspiration, but it can fit so many different "Genres"

Hi, Noah. You've touched a topic that I've been discussing with my friends a lot in the past few years. I believe genres are not that important anymore because the music that's made nowadays is kind of "genreless" in the first place. You rarely see a new artist that's entirely committed to a single genre. All of them include certain elements of other genres. Moreover, even older artists try to incorporate new elements into their music. Thus, we're in a sort of "genre fluidity" era, an era in which we see acts like Pendulum headlining big metal festivals. And that's a great thing! I believe that when it comes to these musical combinations, what draws them together is not so much related to the instruments they're using and the sound they're trying to create, it has a lot more to do with the attitude of these artists and what they stand for. They are similar morally, not sonically. This brings me to my main point, which is: In the 20th century, we've witnessed a musical revolution. It was the first time people could ever talk about different sounds of pop music and about pop music in general. This century gave us a large spectrum of never-heard-before sounds and these sounds clearly had an impact on people (Side note: Can't wait to read your book, I'm very excited to see how you touched this topic in the book). However, the novelty of a genre has diminished considerably with the passing of a few decades after the genre's birth. Moreover, this idea of a connection between the delivered message and the sonic vehicle through which it is delivered is not that big of a deal anymore. We're used to being able to create even the most avangardist art. We know we can do it. These days, we can do it on our phones and we can do it without even knowing the craft of it, thanks to AI. Anyways, I believe that everytime a new genre appears, it is followed by a subculture. A group of people fascinated by this new and hip music that also speaks about a lot of relatable subjects. Well, after a few decades, these subcultures become smaller and they calm down a lot. They stop considering this new genre as being the coolest music on earth and that's probably because things change during these decades. People change and society changes. Despite all this, if a genre is truly remarkable for certain aspects of its sound, those sounds might as well become an aesthetic that will remain. Future artists will incorporate an element of this genre, maybe even creating a new one. Just consider rappers like Tech N9ne and how many songs featuring electric guitar he has. Or imagine what Nu-Metal would be without the rapid chanting of rap music. As I said, all the relevant music genres rose to fame because they had a very dedicated fanbase. They had a group of people which related to that attitude morally and sonically. Well, with time passing, that fanbase changed, many people who used to be rebel teenagers are now married with children and have a regular job. So, the subcultures associated with these genres died out slowly. For instance, take the nu-metal fanbase of the '90s (And yes, I know it's a subgenre and not a genre, but stay with me on this one, ok?): Nu-metal became famous because it was the exact opposite of the glamorous rock and metal scene of the '80s. People grew frustrated because those glam rock acts became sell-outs and killed the very thing that rock music stood for. Hence, enter the bands in tracksuits. In 2024, people don't feel frustrated on those "sell-outs" anymore, so, they will not relate that much with the idea of being in a group of nu-metalists. They will not feel the need to put on an Adidas suit and raise their middle fingers to those dressed in animal print. Speaking about past and present generations, as you said in your video, social identities used to be a lot more focused on musical identities. I believe that's because of the fact that every music genre had a very clear identity. A few decades ago, if you were pissed off by the political systems, for instance, you will find a punk band that's going to sing to you about anarchy, whereas now, if you get into punk music, you will find punk music with far right views just as much as you will find a leftist punk band. It becomes less relatable for you when you walk in a record store and search in the punk category. The word "punk" loses its meaning if it can't help a person find the music he's looking for. The fact that a genre has such a large spectrum of attitudes is not necessarily a bad thing, but it depreciates the idea of subcultures associated with music genres as much as it brings the genre's name to near-nonsense. What I'm trying to say in this RU-vid comment that turned into an entire novel, is that without a subculture, calling a musical act with a specific term is not that important. And again, this is not a bad thing, just like you said. I also find this fluidity to be organic and, because time changes people and it's not worth crying over some specific genres or subgenres that are almost dead. They will reincarnate as an element of a future artist's music.

I agree with the appeal of “vibes-based” playlists over genre-specific ones. I’m old enough that I still mostly listen to specific albums, but the two playlists I keep are ones I call “Beatless ambient” and “Birthday”. The first is for working or falling asleep to, and while there’s the obvious Eno and Aphex Twin in there, there’s also experimental electronic music (Laurie Spiegel), classical (Arvo Pärt), guitar loops (Robert Fripp) and some undefinable pieces (Ryuichi Sakamoto). The latter is just feel-good music for parties, stuff that I’ve loved for a long time, mostly 80s synth pop or 90s techno/house/big beat/DnB, but with some more recent songs in a similar vein. However, I still do stick to genre in one sense: while this channel has massively helped me understand and appreciate genres such as rock, folk and blues, they’re still not the sort of music I’ll listen to for pleasure. I just feel more at home with music that’s crafted in a studio or lab with knobs, wires and keyboards than music that’s performed on a stage with guitars drums and impassioned vocals.

I'm an Old man yelling at cloud, but music is always a thing of youth. They change music.

I love random non-genre-specific playlists. I made one literally called "Filmore & Sarge Staring at the Stop Light Vibes", and it's just a bunch of songs that make me feel like that scene from Cars.

Absolutely love the bromance between 12tone and Polyphonic

Idk, humans wanting to categorize stuff is pretty much baked in. I don't believe it will ever stop. Maybe the tension between wanting to categorize and not wanting to *be categorized* even drives the evolution of art.

I'd very much agree with this. The people who lament about good music being dead are almost universally genre junkies. This is an amazing time for music. It's never been so wide open. Granted, that makes it harder for working musicians to make a living & establish any sort of footprint. But it mean there's a lot more out there waiting to be discovered. Something new that'll amaze you.

Taste broadened bc listening to music got cheaper, and genre shrank bc making music got cheaper. It used to be there was a barrier to entry for sampling music outside of your existing tastes. When I was growing up, the only music I knew was what was on the radio or whatever CDs I and my friends could afford. When you went to a record shop, maybe you could only afford 3 CDs, so you stuck to music you knew you already liked. That all changed when I arrived at college in the middle of the mp3 sharing era, when practically every person on campus had a public folder full of mp3s, often meticulously organized by genre and subgenre, that you could riffle through. My musical world exploded as I discovered all kinds of music I’d never heard before. Digital music shrank the cost of checking out new artists and new genres to almost zero. At the same time as everyone’s tastes were broadening, the barrier to entry for creating and sharing music was also shrinking. More people were getting into the game, having to define themselves in ever more narrow subgenres in order to find an audience and stand out in the sea of digital music.

7:21 When I saw the video title, this was pretty much exactly the thought that came into my head. Definitely agree with what you're saying here. I was very interested to see this topic come up, because I consider myself a multi-genre musician. I've played Blues, funk, salsa, classical, jazz, progressive rock, folk, electronic... I just love music and eagerly consume and perform it whenever I can. As long as it's good, the genre's almost irrelevant. I've recently started paying more attention to marketing my work to fans, and so this is an important subject. Bandcamp lets you tag tracks/albums with any genres you want, but nevertheless, you're required to have a "primary genre" as well, which is always included. Since I'm releasing both electronic work and piano solos at the moment, this is slightly awkward (unless I want to create a separate artist account, that is). As for my answer to the question "what kind of music do you listen to?" - it's "Bandcamp" 😛 Bandcamp radio (daily/weekly) constantly introduces me to new discoveries, and it's a fascinating journey.

I love artists who make full use of this and just do whatever the fuсk they want, like Poppy. I feel like this improves the overall quality of music, it’s a big step from artists being forced to do the same stuff their whole career or lose audience. Idk how Poppy works, maybe she really has a team behind her that knows exactly what to release, but she makes it SEEM like the former is the case and I hope future artists take this direction as well.

I like that you brought up Funkadelic/Bowie because the more times I listen to Mothership Connection the more I realize “oh, funk is just a branch of rock music.” Genre isn’t all downstream of segregation, but it mainly serves to reify differences, so I really don’t have much use for it.

When people asks what kind of music I listens to, I mostly answer that I like all kinds of genres. But, that I mostly listens to music that came out around 60's and 70's. It's not because "I don't like modern music", but that I just find those decades of music more captivating. It's also a "hobby" of mine to explore good 60's & 70's music I haven't heard before. Digging deep to find hidden gems and such :)

I confirm. The term “vibe” has become a legit professional term in the last years. In combination with genre and reference it helps in communication inside music sphere. But genre as a concept can’t die. It was coined not by companies but by the audience to make communication easier. Try not to use genre names when speaking about music and you’ll see😀

To tell songs from a same genre appart we often use words to describe the cadency of the rythmic session or the scale used to build the melodic structure. I think the general perception of musical genres will gradually evolve to a point where we see all genres as a mere structure of sonic texture were the vibes will become a thing just like saying "this song uses the major scale and plays on 3/4 tempo"

Great to see you creating videos again, you’ve been missed!

There is only Trout Mask Replica.

Gonna be real I do use genres as a starting point when I'm searching for new music to listen to. I am always in the genre tab on Bandcamp. Also, I found communities thanks to searching for certain subgenre forums. I do see the negative of labeling music. It puts great music into small boxes that probably don't even properly describe the music. Some people would immediately dismiss bands and artists just cuz of the genre placement. People could also limit their chances in finding good music by only listening to a certain genre. I, sometimes, post reviews on a music blog I created and genres help me describe the music, I would write, "if you enjoy (a specific subgenre) you might enjoy this record." I do believe that artists/bands shouldn't hinder themselves with trying to focus on a certain label. You should just create what you want to make and let the audience name which genre you fall into. IDK, I guess it's a love/hate relationship for me.

This is an issue when people are hyper fixated in their own subject and lose sight of the trees for the forest. If you remove agreed upon definitions you end up alienating the general public, gatekeeping for "certain" kind of people. Same has been attempted with other types of art, such as theater to painting - or even cosine! And you know who is the people eating at the "fusion contemporarily" restaurant and who at the hotdogs joint? Yup.

Something cool I experienced in Germany was music in German and American music. “American” music was Tim McGraw, usher, Janet Jackson and Foo Fighters all on a station whose songs were all in English 👍🏾👍🏾 Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age’s Alligator Hour, singing Minnie The Moocher,Justin Hawkins singing Alexander O’Neill and Cherrelle, Dave Grohl listening to Ohio Players , Gap Band and Dazz Band. This is frikkin fantastic!!!! Thanks!! I have believed in what you are saying since the 80s when I listened to The Police, Prince, J Geils Band, Earth, Wind and Fire, The TimeTeena Marie, Switch, Foreigner, Anne Murray, AC/DC, Buck Owens,Tom Jones, Glen Campbell, Aretha Franklin, Yaz, Wall of Voodoo, Poison, Bon Jovi, Def Lepard, Van Halen, Aly Us, Whodini, Luther Vandross, Los Hermanos Rosario, Jossy Esteban y La Patrulla Quince. Juan Luis Guerra y 440, The New York Band Trouble Funk, EU,… you get my point 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾

Welcome back!

I've been thinking about this topic a whole lot recently and god bless you for talking about it :) this is a super cool video

Microgenres have been a thing for a while, mainly retrospective microgenres, to define specific branches of 60s garage rock music you had garage punk and freakbeat, you also got sunshine pop for a different style of psychedelic pop music from the '60s, and all these are all genre terms that never existed back then. It's just become way more popular to have these very niche descriptors, and it's pointing towards a kind of post-genre world. But I think it's still pretty useful to have genres become so hyperspecific, because it makes it much easier to find a style of music that just adheres to a specific sound you are looking for.

One of my favourite playlists I made I titled "The Rebellion of Hope" a collection of songs that I wanted to tell the story of a group of punks who hijack a media station, get into an argument amongst themselves and are ultimately destroyed by the fascist authority they rebelled against. The playlist includes songs from Green Day, RATM, New Radicals, Bruce Cockburn, Golden Earring, Soundgarden, and begins with Chumbawamba. While it would have been nice to be able to have every song be the same type of sound, ultimately the way each song added to the story was more important.

If anything, the ease and accessibility of music nowadays has reinforced the dominance of genres in an increasingly atomized way but in a way that is both increasingly granular and mostly kept behind the scenes. If somebody recommends me a song that sounds nothing like I've ever heard before, what I might do is go get a mix for the song. I must emphasize that this did not come from nowhere. People had to listen to music and assign tags to each individual song so that algorithm could put together that "Upbeat Mix" for you, but the thing is the playlist is not going to just select a bunch of random tracks that have been tagged "upbeat" at you because it is going to look at songs you have liked and listened to repeatedly with that tag to create invisible weights to identify what you would want and create a positive feedback loop. Without even thinking about it, I just asked an algorithm to analyze that one song and asked it to weigh the song across all sorts of various different tags that have been crunched on the back-end to find songs with similar weights on those various factors. Some of these tags about things such as mood are assigned by people, and some can be assigned mechanically such as BPM, but taken together this combined effort behind the scnes is how Spotify can successfully differentiate what a "Focus EDM Mix" should have in it versus a "Workout EDM mix" versus a "Chill EDM mix." Not all the weights are public knowledge for proprietary reasons and some tags just being so broad or specific as to be nearly useless in most music conversation, but you can get a peak at how granular it can get by looking on Spotify at "Your Niche Mixes" which are various weird tags that Spotify suspects that you like and is generating specific playlists for indulging that specific niche interest, and this ranges from those examples I gave about two different EDM mixes to stuff like "Video Game Music" to "100 BMP Mix" to "Happy Walking Mix" to "Hype Motivation Mix" to whatever the heck "Goblincore Mix" is among the nearly 100 various niches Spotify has identified as me being into. For better and worse, our ability to discover music is based upon algorithms understanding what we like far better than we ever could. Genres, as a concept, were primarily useful as a means of helping people find stuff they liked beyond the level of band fandom. You would use terms with varying degrees of specificity from broad terms like "Jazz" to terms that referred to connotations of things that developed in specific regions such as "Kansas City Jazz" to more technical descriptions such as "Modal Jazz." You can actually see this specific purpose clearly in some names such as "Hip Hop" being a direct reference to a memorable lyric from the song "Rapper's Delight" which helped people find music that sounded like this thing that many people had never been exposed to previously. Before the advent of music streaming algorithms, there was a ton of backending still, as typically the person who would be introducing a lot of stuff for you were DJs and record store owners, as they were subscribed to music industry magazines that identified broad niches of interest and would catalogue music based on those, so even back in the day a lot of this genre classification stuff was still important but was back-ended beyond the most basic terms such as "R&B" and "rock". The other alternative back in the pre-internet days were ones run by more hardcore fans who also subscribed to those industry magazines and would make their own consumer-focused magazines that, not being in the business of selling the records themselves, would instead promote themselves explicitly as taste-makers who would tell you what they thought was worth listening to and was best ignored. When the internet came about and filesharing sites popped-up, the barrier to entry to exploring music dropped massively as was the cost of sharing your music opinions and so places where people could share their sage advice on music became a dime-a-dozen and terms could be coined and dropped incredibly quickly and all this terminology increasingly atomized into further niche communities. With the advent of music streaming, what we saw was far more instantaneous feedback and, with it, it became increasingly easy to refine marketing music from broad interests and profiles to instead hyper-specific measurements of how various weights and combinations of them play with each specific listener to increasingly fine-tune recommendations, and that's getting to a weird point where something that isn't human probably understands what you like far better than how you could explain it. While there are some genres where I feel that I have a decent grasp of the language of describing what I like about them, for others I am basically at the mercy of an algorithm that basically used a statistical formula to figure-out what I like and don't like in electronic music far better than I could ever put into words, and that's a weird feeling. I think genre is "dead" in the same sense as punk is. It depends upon your definition. I vaguely remember a tale that the original meaning of "punk is dead" was about how punk had influenced so many artists doing so many different things with those influences that the connotation of "punk" as this rebellious thing that exists outside the mainstream was dead, but the genre and it's the various new genres and subgenres it influenced were more popular than had ever been the case at the time. If you are focused upon genre as terms, then I could see what you are getting at with how our language for describing music is increasingly less tied to old genre classifications, but the specific purpose that genre filled of finding what specific things you like about music so that music can be pushed to you has become so thoroughly-optimized through statistics that old descriptions are not being rendered "obsolete" but rather just one more weight in a model for identifying music and pushing it to you in a way that a record store could have never even dreamed of accomplishing. On the one hand, our music tastes are more atomized than they have ever been, but also people are exposed to far more music than we have ever been and have a lot more opportunity and freedom to explore genres they previously would have never had the chance to explore.

As a musician who has never been strictly bound by any specific genre or stylistic restrictions, I’ve always struggled when people ask me what kind of music I play. Anyone got any clever or playfully snarky responses that have worked well for you? Lol

There were always thousands of microgenres, ever since the 50s. Now, we just have a way to name them

I remember suggesting this video idea! I don't know if it was towards you or Middle 8, but I noticed since we live in the era of Spotify, people are more and more uninterested in being boxed in creatively. Genre is not yet gone, but on its way out.

I think that Napster is the hidden spark to where we are now. You would go and open Napster on the world map it used to have and click on someone's music library in whatever country. At least that is exactly what I did, and got to listen to basically everything - and it was free(-ish). Without Napster and the MP3, we would most likely be discussing something else. Long live Napster!

"I listen to everything" is an empty statement that usually means the person only listens to what the radio, TV, music apps suggests to them. At least in my experience, every single time I heard that from someone I ask them to tell me names of bands or musicians they listen and 10 out of 10 times, it's whatever is popular in that moment.

The very mention of Loreena McKennett made me so happy. And I agree; I like that music is being less categorized by genre and moreso by vibes. That's how I make my playlists as well

Never met someone that says they listen to everything actually listen to everything. I absolutely love having a big part of my personality being about classic rock. Walls of posters, closet of shirts, boxes of vinyls. Recently got into swing music for dancing too. Anyone who can’t find a genre that resonates with them doesn’t truly have a mind for music

As I'm not in a academic either.I appreciate your candor and you're definite love of music genres

" My record collection is organised by vibes " might be the most hipster sentence I've heard this year

The response I came up with for people who answer "a little bit of everything" is to ask them "who's your favorite electronic Mongolian throat singer?" For anyone wondering, mine is ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KW7uvYz9yjA.html

What I really need is an anti recinmendation algorithm. For the last few years i have been making a conscious effort to avoid listening to music I know and love. I'm a huge Bowie fan but I haven't listened to his nusic for ages and might never listen to it again. Most of the time I rely on pages such as tapeferat and everynoise but what I really want from Spotify is not "you have listened to Polish post pop country on Tuesday night so let's do it again", what i want is "based on what you have listened before it's time to dislike something new". My obscurity rating is alreasy 99 percent and i hope to keep it that way.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEECK!!! Why no one ever talks about him? He’s been genre-blending and genre hopping since the 90s. When Odelay came out no one knew how to classify his music. Ahead of the curve!😅

As a DJ, I think genre is still pretty important in certain musical subcultures. I'm someone who goes out of my way to find niche music that often isn't available on major streaming services and genre is one tool I use out of many to search for it. Dance/electronic music in general puts a lot of emphasis on genre, because different genres *feel* drastically different to dance to and have a huge effect on the energy of the space. While there is room for flexibility between genres, they tend to be designed for tracks to work together in a mix and maintain a specific vibe. It gives me tools to tell other people about the music I play and for promoters to communicate about the styles of music people can expect at the event. It also gives people a starting point for learning how to make music that sounds a certain way. Heck, even in a broader sense, genre gives a lot of information about what context you can expect to hear the music and what type of community and sub-culture is built around it, and I and many others I know have found a lot of meaning and joy in participating in those subcultures. So no, genre isn't going anywhere and that's a good thing. Some people will be elitists about their chosen genres, some genres might be poorly defined or have problematic origins, but that isn't a problem with genre as a whole

Holy effing eff!! You're back!! RU-vid apparently decided not to tell me!!

Corridos, Country, Rap, Blues and Punk Rock are songs I like to bring together in playlists. They feel like they should be together.

One of my favorite bands now is Johnny Manchild and the Poor Bastards and they're a great example of this. My best description at this point is "Jazz Punk" or "Jazz Alt" but not Ska. When I tell people that all I get is blank stares cuz wtf does that even mean

Shouldn't Skwee just be someone that looks like they stepped out of a Wes Anderson movie playing a toy synthesizer?

Many already noticed this in metal, didn't know it was universal. Besides, I myself fit into the argument, I make electronic music and I don't care which genre it fits into, if I got a synth I'm gonna use it in whatever way I can think of.

I discovered that fishmans project last year! Its length does remind me of Pink Floyd and a lot of prog rock from that time!

Ok but now I want all your Estonian folk music recs! Veljo Tormis is my favorite (he does choral arrangements)

When most people say "a bit of everything" they generally have no idea what everything is. It just means they listen to popular mainstream music, and yeah, that means, pop, hiphop, rnb and quite some other genres, they can all still be defined as pretty similar songs, since they basically listen to the top charts, specially when compared to everything else, from alternative to underground music. And in truth, the mainstream is just the tip of the iceberg. So I don't think that's true at all, you show them any genre or song that is not mainstream, they will bat an eye. I would even say the genres in mainstream have meddled together a lot.

Glad to have you back, Mr. Polyphonic!!!!!!!!! Always intrigue with your analysis. Keep up the great work!!!!

I’ve struggled with this as an artist for a LONG time. Both in terms of the degree of change over my career, the gap between pretty much any two of my songs, and even the influences within single songs. I started out making retro sounding guitar pop, which could variously have country, folk, pop punk in it. I went through a jazzy phase. Recently my stuff is lyrically almost punk adjacent, but the vocal delivery on verses is often pretty hip-hop, the instrumental palette is all over the place, very Beatles inspired, but sometimes it’s folky, I made a straight up 2000s pop punk sounding song just the other week. It’s impossible to tell people what I make.

I❤CC: "...and that's why I'm here to tell you about this week's spawn sir. Brilliant." I pictured a waiter in front of a river, talking to a grizzly bear who just showed up. I think genre is fine as a tool to describe about a specific piece of music efficiently. I think of genres impressionistically like you do. Some people have a very strict definition of blues, but I'm more of a "I know it when I hear it" kind of definer. When I play keyboard, sometimes I associate genres with what I played, based on the feeling I get, rather than strict adherence to genre conventions. For example, if I get the feeling of "surf garage rock" from a keyboard jam, then that's how I'll think of it, even if that genre literally involves a full band of separate instruments... it's more of an impressionistic feeling. That was a recent example, but I've been thinking that way for years now. And since I started thinking that way about my own playing, I do it with other peoples' music, in general, now... which can lead to funny interactions. There are some singer songwriter tracks that I think of as reggae because of the way the rhythm bubbles over... and I've learned that people will tend to be like, "What?!" if I vocalize that. So, sometimes genre's not even efficient for communicating. And if you're not trying to organise the inventory at a record store, or reviewing about music online... well, someone who makes video essays about music just posited that it's mostly vestigial, so...

Thought provoking stuff. Nicely done 👍👍. As an electronic music meddler, I'm constantly troubled by genre. In terms of labelling my content to give viewers an insight into what the video is like just from the thumbnail. But in truth i rarely actually make music fixed in any one genre. I meander around mixing all the inspiration from my fairly long music listening life. I actually dont really want to pigeon hole what my music is but are possible viewers going to click and watch if it jist says "some music"? 😅

Very well said. And thank you for answering a question I posed after your last video.

You KNOW you have to provide more information regarding your vibe classification system!

Can't get enough of your graphical art style

Anybody that says did they listen to a little bit of everything truly doesn't. Having at least a handful of genres that you don't like ensures you actually have taste.

Yo @polyphic do you share your playlists anywhere?

I totally agree. It's all music on different parts of a continuous spectrum, not discrete boxes to be separated into. I also don't like the term "classical" music at all. Each composer is unique in their approach, not to mention their early works and later works are often so different it's hardly the same person.

I think it's interesting comparing the crossover in arguments in combining genres vs combining cultures. In an era where there are so many people desperate to save their individual culture, I think that looking at the breakdown of genre barriers is an interesting foil to it. Much lower "stakes" with similar potential outcomes

What usually happens with me when I come across a new band or "genre" I'll be listening to an album on Spotify or sometimes Google music (depends if I managed to get a free trial with Google otherwise it's Spotify lol) and I let it run on picking things itself and when I hear something that makes my ears pricks up I check into it more and then if I like that band it goes into rotation and I find out more about them or the "genre". One of my fave live albums ever (Live+Cuddly by NoMeansNo) I found this way and this is how I got into Math Rock because Don Caballero came on and then I found Hellas first album etc....music is music. Sebadoh is another band I found this way. If I like it and it makes me feel passionate or whatever then I'm happy. Now I think about it there's quite a few bands I've found because of this or from hearing a new band and then reading about them and their influences or who they are similar to and then I end up finding more and more

Very interesting video! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I like that these days genre is getting really specific and also being well documented. So aren't just saying "this is my favorite Hip-Hop album." A gebre that seemed to pop up in the 10's is Drumless which is the style of Hip-Hop that Earl Sweatshirt's "Some Rap Songs" is in. I like gebre being that specfiic because if you want to hear more it helps to have a name. I also love genre bending. So cool to see disparate things combined and sound like it was always meant to be together.

Have you ever looked at a Top 40 Chart between 1964 and 1974? It was muti-genre and great. I will agree, it's been mostly, if not completely fucked ever since.

I've been on a real Johnny Cash kick lately, and talk about a musical artist that transcends genre and labels. And I certainly wouldn't tell anyone how to listen to music (art is subjective after all), but really when you start digging into it, the lines between genre start to blur or break down anyway, because you start getting subgenres and subsubgenres.

I definitely agree with a lot of your observations. Matter of fact, almost all my spotify playlist don't even have a proper name, instead I give them one or more emojis that better represents the vibes of the music in it

as someone who grew up in the gen x era, music genre was the way to show who you are, I fell outside of that cause the people I was around music differed so wildly, my grandfather was from the depression and loved Sinatra and bing Crosby, my mother loved rock from the 60s and 70s as well as disco, my friends we into rap and their parents were into 60s and 70s R&B. they treated it as if it was different worlds but sonically I heard connections and fell in love with them all for different reasons. as I rounded into a teenager and early 20s I found myself falling in love with the blues, thrash metal, funk and concise rap. I would avoid talk with others about my music taste. cause I didnt know other teens in the 90s who thought sitting on the dock of the bay was the perfect song or wondered how cliff burtons death shaped metallica, why did the blues in the 80s use horrible synthesized beats and surely couldn't share how I thought nas was way better then biggie and how go-go music is just sped up jazz with a focus on percussion

I've always liked mixing different genres (more accurately, subgenres) in my own music writing. I started out in metal/grunge, the more extreme, weird stuff like that. Now I'm doing electronic music. So the way I look at genre is like an instrument, or maybe more accurately an effects pedal or an organ stop. The same way that I would have put through a different emotional or "vibes" energy into a part of music. now I think that a sudden early 00's nu-metal guitar riff, or bells covered in reverb" or reese bass, or a screechy witch house saw. or string quartet with noise to make it sound like an old record, is to put the image that I want into it. I don't know, maybe because my own musical tastes/collection seems like it would irritate people. Metal/extreme metal (a lot of it on the doom/sludge side), grunge (especially the more Jack off Jill type stuff), art rock, ok that can be understood, but you keep going, and you see witch house, industrial, pagan folk, ICP, and then suddenly Mahler. So is this extremely bizarre and complex tastes in music, or is what I like in music more simple: Heavy basslines, minor keys, dissonance, strong emotions and dark and/or occultic subject matter? It's funny that you mentioend 12Tone too because I remember in one of his videos, he said something like "Maybe you're really into dissonance, I dont' know you" and I'm sitting my computer laughing and raising my hand. One of the reasons I look into music theory videos is because in all my different "genres" I've worked so much in minor keys that I find it interesting to have to try to figure out how things work from perspective of most music theory/tradition that bases everything off of major.

Also have my record collection sorted by vibes, hell yeah