As you might have guessed, this one is getting filed under the “Thoughts” category, and it’s going to be an article of entirely my opinion, with no music.
If that didn’t scare you away, it might generate an interesting discussion between us, so let’s get started and I’ll see you down in the comments.
There is something going on in the world of electronic music that, to me, is nothing but bad news.
In fact, this is not something that is limited to the electronic genre, it plagues all forms of music and in mediums beyond, in basically any platform of art you can imagine.
It’s the dreaded “genre” style of artistic classification.
Before I break down everything I see wrong with what’s going on in the splintering of genres in electronic music, let’s give this system it’s due props…
What Genres Do Right
Classifying music in “genres” definitely has it’s purpose.
For instance, I’ve always defined this site as an electronic music blog, which in itself contains two forms of classification using genres:
- This site is specifically about electronic music
- This site is a blog, and updates as such
The benefit of doing things this way?
You know what you’re getting into right out of the gate.
This isn’t a Grooveshark or Pandora style site, and I don’t post about country music: the purpose and your utility & enjoyment of the site is practically spelled out for you just by letting you know what it is.
And that is a great time saver, you won’t have to slog through multiple posts only to find that it isn’t for you, if you like electronic music and you enjoy blogs, it’s a good chance that this is up your alley.
The other thing to consider is that there is great musical value in distinguishing.
Essentially, classifying music has helped us (specifically historians) to be able to track the evolution of genres and music as a whole.
People embracing certain genres (think about the effects all of the early “blues” players had) is essentially what leads to new forms of music, so it is a critical part of the evolution of music.
So…
Where Things Go Wrong
In the electronic genre, we have a few notable sub-genres, which, to a certain extent, seem to work pretty well.
Again, the classification process itself is a fundamental part of organizing things, humans need it to survive in a world overloaded with information.
Knowing that a song is of the “dubstep” variety is going to help you if you enjoy or don’t enjoy that style of music.
It’s also going to help you if you know nothing about that kind of music: if you find out that it’s for you, you are able to look up more dubstep, if not, you can avoid it like the plague.
The problem arises when you start to splinter an already diversified audience.
Michal Menert put it quite eloquently in our interview when we discussed how the internet was changing music consumption.
When asked on his thoughts about how the internet was diversifying musical genres (and if that’s a good or bad thing), he responded:
Yes and no. I think the scattering of tastes has led to really interesting styles and some amazing experimentation.
It’s given everyone a platform, because now someone from a small town, who may have had trouble finding 5 people in their home state that would appreciate their ‘artform’, can get thousands of fans internationally.
On the flip side, all these sub genres are getting ridiculous and are dividing an already fragmented audience base in many cases.
But then again, who doesn’t love progressive-indy-electro-post-psy-house-moomba-core-step?
The problem he highlights is this incessant focus on classifying every single piece of music that comes out.
Furthermore, the “genre snobbery” that is abundant among folks dedicated to an arbitrary labeling of their favorite style of music is pretty outrageous at times.
I see it first hand running a YouTube channel, and yes, although I realize YouTube is one of those places where people just don’t give a shit, you definitely pick up on this constant bickering about whether something is “electro, IDM, glitch, moobahton, dubstep, house, etc etc etc”, as if those classifications effected the quality of the music or someone’s potential enjoyment of it.
And yet, we need to classify things to a certain extent, how else would we consistently listen to electronic music (if that was our genre of choice) if there was no way to classify it easily?
How do we come to a reasonable compromise?
Have Your Cake… and Eat It Too
I think the main problem people have is that they declare their first encounter with a musical genre as the “true form” of the genre.
The other problem is how antagonistic people become when someone gets a genre classification “wrong”.
Let’s take a look at this video…
Things to ignore in this video:
- Goofy hair
- Snarky (and obnoxious) attitude
- Very poor metaphor (the cat one)
The general point being made is that music evolves over time, but people focus on their first encounter too heavily.
It might be hard to embrace changes in your favored genres, but imagine if genres didn’t evolve.
It would be a scary world without the many different forms of music to enjoy, and yet people are so laser focused on classifying what is “true” and what “isn’t”, they miss out on the big picture: music must (and always will) change.
So what’s to be done?
Really, the only thing we can do is address how we approach our classification of music.
People fall back on what is “true _____”, relate this “true” form to their initial encounter with the genre, and label things that don’t “fit” as something else, and this is how we got to our ‘progressive-indy-electro-post-psy-house-moomba-core-step’ type classifications.
Is It Just Me… Or Does Anyone Else Not Care?
My take on genres?
I need large, encompassing genres to help guide me to certain areas of music that I want to listen to.
For instance, I need “blues” and I need “rock” to help differentiate between the two, but I care not about labeling things ” post-modern blues-rock”, even if I can’t place my thumb on which one a song “sounds” like.
Similarly, does electronic music need limiting genres that have now splintered into an uncountable mess in a desperate attempt to label every potential sound under the sun?
I think not.
Do we need to group music in a general sense to help with it’s progression, and more importantly, help us seek out more of something we like?
I think so.
…Just Kidding, I Want To Hear From You
In reality, I haven’t said much throughout this whole post, I guess that’s the curse of attempting to put forward an argument on a muddy subject, you can sometimes not go anywhere at all.
The real purpose of this post was to hear from you.
I really enjoy discussing in the comments, but posts on new tracks don’t often leave room for that type of discussion.
So, make this post worthwhile: tell me what you think by leaving a comment (you can click here).
Are splintering music genres killing electronic music, or… not?
