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One hypothesis for why genres matter less is musical abundance and identity as a result of that.

I think when you had to buy a record or CD people would consider themselves a “punk rock” person or whatever for any genre and they’d tend to buy and listen to/show their friends that music.

With streaming services, and easy access to wide variety there’s not much need for this kind of thing so tastes blend more on the consumption side. They then start to blend more on the creation side too.

One thing I’ve noticed is that music has gone from an activity (listen to this record I got) to entirely personal and mostly ambient.

Maybe that’s a factor of my age, but I think it’s mostly related to higher stimulus activities now available on the internet.

You're not alone on this. I recently saw this video from a guitar teacher who has been doing it since the 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emOJdqsEU0o

He charts the patterns in how his students engaged with music over his career and comes to the same conclusions you do, shifting from a very highly engaged relationship with bands and acts to a relationship with music as more of an aural thing. Often he finds people don't even necessarily know the names of the songs they enjoy, while in the past people would read liner notes and learn a whole origin story for their favorite acts.

He attributes it largely to the neverending algorithmic feed. You don't need to know anything about the music you like to find more music like it, the feed does it for you. Not always for the best of course. I recently started listening to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack and really enjoy it, but algorithmic feeds seem to associate it with a lot of anime soundtracks and Jpop rather than associating it with jazz and funk, the actual musical genres the soundtrack is in.

I'm not an insider in the music industry so I can't comment on this teacher's view but that seems... possible sure yeah I can see it.

That's totally separate from the algorithm/genre issue though. The genres have never ever really perfectly matched up with the music but it doesn't matter. If the algorithm perfectly selected more music you like you still wouldn't be more likely to look up the name of the track I don't think.

Anyway that soundtrack is... not jpop per se but it is heavily influenced by it. The format and aesthetics are very jazz-like but the rhythms and harmonizations are very jpop. That might not be the most _useful_ association in this context of finding music that sounds similar, but it is there. And in its way as accurate as calling it jazz. Saying it's "actually" jazz or funk is... that's just not really how this works. It's not wrong to say it's jazz but it's wrong to say anything really is ONLY jazz, and can't also be other things too.

> If the algorithm perfectly selected more music you like you still wouldn't be more likely to look up the name of the track I don't think.

The causation goes the other way. People are more likely to want to learn about the background behind the music in order to more deeply immerse themselves into a scene where they can be exposed to more music like this. It's why if you go into the record store looking for a recommendation one of the first questions is "What kind of music do you like?" But if nobody ever asks you that question, and you never have to stop and think about it in order to articulate your answer to that question, you wouldn't really know off the top of your head.

Interesting angle that I hadn't considered but I think you're right. I'm reconsidering my position on this one, thank you!

The "Old Town Road" Billboard kerfuffle was a great demonstration of the thesis of the piece: that the hard categorisations of music are racially driven.

Yep. If you listen to "hillbilly music" and "blues" from the 20s and 30s, or "rock" and "r&b" from the 50s or 60s, they are musically indistinguishable. The difference almost always solely lies in the race of the musicians or the target audience

Literally the reason "rock and roll" exists as a label was to segregate "ethnic" (read: Black) music in record stores and on the radio for a white audience.

Interesting and damning claim! Do you have a source for it? Ive googled around and found no mention of race in the articles I've read

It is in the Bob Dylan article itself.

I finally got around to listening to Led Zepplin I the other day...a couple of times I thought to myself "man, this sounds like the blues."

A lot of heavy metal is the blues played very fast and with heavy distortion. So many of the solos by Pantera use the blues scale

Half their songs are covers of older blues songs.

Plagiarized.

They really did claim to have written "Killing Floor" with a stupid title of "The Lemon Song." Howlin' Wolf had been to london and recorded with Clapton. Hendrix had played a scorching version of it on BBC Radio One. No way they could have missed just that one. Then all the Willie Dixon. It's embarrassing how often Page/Plant claimed to have written classic blues and robbed working folk artists. Lowered my opinion of them significantly to see it so if you want to hero-worship them maybe skip compilations like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiiY4ciKFQA

And that's just some of it. When they stopped doing it the quality of their output fell off a cliff.

Hard rock and heavy metal have their roots in the blues. All of the early bands that defined those genres straddled the line between blues and rock. Led Zeppelin were heavily influenced by the blues; but also if you listen to a band like Deep Purple you will hear the blues influence all over the place. Hendrix, of course, supercharged the blues and it would be difficult to say if he was a blues or rock performer. Even Black Sabbath showed their blues influences in many songs.

That's my take too. Also for The Weeknd it's especially true with early releases, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPp5Ty9EE6k. On the hip hop side Lil Peep (RIP at 22 unfortunately) is also typical of that blend, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAMgQQMZ9Lk or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOujzvtwZ6M, with a huge 90's alt rock vibe.

> And if you look at what is happening on Bandcamp or Soundcloud or YouTube or wherever else young people are trying new things you see a tremendous heterogeneity of inspiration and not a lot of concern for where the sound fits in.

One way I have heard to mentally categorize things: What is the stereotypical musical instrument of that generation/genre?

For jazz and the silent generation it was the saxophone, maybe others though.

For rock-n-roll it's the electric guitar, no question.

The 80's was the electric keyboard and synths, kinda.

Today? The laptop.

The laptop is probably on the way out for a lot of electronic music. I just got a Launchpad X to see what all the hype was about, and it's a lot of fun. The fancier Pro MK3 model can hook right up to a synthesizer. You can already get a fully independent music-making tool in the higher-end Maschine+. I wouldn't be surprised if the inevitable Ableton Push 3 was standalone.

> The laptop is probably on the way out for a lot of electronic music.

The VR "EXA: The Infinite Instrument"[1] seemed one intriguing window on the future. Development looks stalled.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/606920/EXA_The_Infinite_I...

There was a TV show a long time ago that was basically 3D demo reels. This reminded me of that. I can't remember the name. It might have been part of another show.

edit: It was Eye Drops on TechTV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlM2LFPjS5k

The OP-1 just hit 10 years – many have made albums on that little music box.

The laptop? Or the DAW?

Good point. But I feel that a DAW is a bit higher up the professionalization chain for most of the kids out there.

However, for the keyboard, mic, headphone, software, etc you're in the ~$500+ range. But, a Silvertone Stratotone in 1960 was ~$55. That's ~$500 today when adjusting for inflation, so right in the ballpark.

The DAW ushered in by Protools and its plugins.

>Today? The laptop

The laptop is really just a tool to host different virtual instruments.

The "instrument" most easily associated with the past 15-20 years of electronic/pop music making have been Wave Table synthesizers like NI Massive and Serum.

Remember Skrillex? Those screeching sounds and basses are using Wavetable synthesis (from NI Massive in particular).

A big part of the reason it's harder to associate a particular instrument with newer electronic genres is because it's FAR easier (and more common) now to program your own patches (essentially a preset instrument) for your songs.

The DX-80 mentioned in the next section was VERY difficult to create patches for (even for it's time) so when you hear it in a song, it's almost always the included stock patches.

>The 80's was the electric keyboard and synths, kinda.

You'd associate a few types of instruments (and synthesis types) with the 80s but the reigning one was FM Synthesis, in particular the Yamaha DX-80.

Give a listen to some stick DX-80 patches and you'll immediately go "Yep, that's the 80's"

To compare this to the 1950s is... very strange. For listeners, the broadening of access to the full diversity of music between 1950 and 1990 was unprecedented in history and will never happen again, simply due to the rise of technology, and the sudden access to all the traditions of the world within a single generation.

> Lil Nas X and The Weeknd, neither of whom fits comfortably in the genre they are assigned to by the RIAA.

For me, this is generic and formulaic music that could have come out any time in the last thirty years (except for the ubiquitous "autotune/overcompress" sound I suppose).

"Not fitting comfortable into a genre" is so bland a compliment!

But I agree with this - all the action is in Bandcamp and similar.

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A composer named Steve Reich wrote several pieces of tape music (processed tape recordings) back in the 70s that were a huge hit (in avant circles), but then he went to study in Ghana and decided that this was a mistake. He felt that the purpose of music was for humans to play and sing together as a group activity, and that pre-recorded music did not fulfill this very deep human need.

I was skeptical when I first read this, but time has proven him entirely right.

Interesting, I didn't know that about Reich. Another leftfield hitmaker, Bill Drummond of the KLF, came to a similar conclusion, which prompted him to start a series of collaborative live music projects ("the 17" maybe the most well-known)

You miss the point.

Lil Nas X and The Weeknd are placed in R&B almost exclusively because they are black. In your eyes, sung by a white person in 1986, would be synth pop.

Did Billy Ray Cyrus make Old Town Road suddenly country? Is Montero (call me by your name) rap or a gay dance anthem?

As an X'er, The Weeknd's latest music does sound amazingly to me like a callback to early 80s's new wave synth pop. "Save Your Tears" could've been an OMD single. As such, to me, it's a powerful challenge to existing musical categories.

But to how many people younger than me does this really register?

Younger millennial/Z-adjacent here. I don’t claim to speak for everyone younger than me, but I am continually impressed by the level of genre awareness today’s youngsters have.

Genres like synth/vapor wave are very conscious remixes of periods of time many of us were barely alive during, and their popularity comes in part, I think, from the tenuousness of their connection to the time period from which those genres draw their audiovisual cues. For me, at least, my earliest memories are a dream half-remembered, and music that draws from but does not emulate music from that time period can be a way for my imagination to fill in the blanks.

This widens my immediate perspective, thanks. One can get caught up in the topic as framed.

And great points: > "Not fitting comfortable into a genre" is so bland a compliment!"

> Steve Reich wrote several pieces of tape music (processed tape recordings) back in the 70s that were a huge hit (in avant circles), but then he went to study in Ghana and decided that this was a mistake. He felt that the purpose of music was for humans to play and sing together as a group activity, and that pre-recorded music did not fulfill this very deep human need.

That is very interesting. (Also, I've only heard Reich's music live, but I've never played along.) In folk music, it is a core belief (long ignored): It's music for folks. Woody Guthrie's songs were written so anyone could play or sing them, as I understand the story. His successors often played more complicated and challenging stuff, much that ordinary people couldn't hope to perform or isn't singalong music. It's hard to imagine sitting around a bar or a living room or out under the stars, singing 'Like a Rolling Stone' together.

I love Reich's early tape loops.. they were so ahead of their time. When I first hear them, I was stunned at how modern-sounding parts of them are.

But I completely and utterly disagree with his view that "the purpose of music was for humans to play and sing together as a group activity"

Music, and any other complex human activity (like visual art, or literature) is just way too rich and varied to have any one or definitive purpose.

What might make sense or be the purpose of music for one person might not for another. Someone (like myself) might enjoy making music alone, and who is Reich to presume to tell me that we're doing it wrong?

Of course, he's welcome to make music in groups if he wants. I'm not going to tell him he's doing it wrong either.

Parenthetically, I enjoy making music in groups too, but that's just not the only way I enjoy making music, and don't think I'm missing "the purpose of music" when I'm working alone.

> Music, and any other complex human activity (like visual art, or literature) is just way too rich and varied to have any one or definitive purpose.

This statement looks intelligent and interest but upon reading carefully says absolutely nothing. I don't even get what you are trying to say. Music is a group activity. Mozart played with orchestras, beyonce has scores of musicians to bounce off ideas of, Fela Kuti played with many bands - what does making music alone mean?

Reich's view was at the very least based on an observation, a learned and studied observation as a practioner and scholar.

None of your examples: Mozart, beyonce, Fela Kuti, or Reich proves anything about the purpose of music as a whole, nor about the purpose of music for everyone.

Sure, some musicians clearly make music with others.

But some do not.

And for someone, no matter how learned or studied, even if they're a famous practitioner or a scholar, to dictate what music is for everyone is absurdly arrogant and myopic, to say the least.

If Reich has an argument to support his claim, he should state it, and his supporters should produce that argument, not point to him being a scholar, etc, as supposed evidence that he's right. That's an argument from authority and is a logical fallacy.

Different people have different goals and different aims. What meaning any particular person finds in an activity varies from person to person, and the wider and richer the activity is, the harder it is to make the case that there's only one right way to do it or that it means only one thing to everyone. Music and other arts are examples of such rich, wide-ranging activities.

> That's an argument from authority and is a logical fallacy.

True. And I should rightly retract and accept that shortcoming but you've provided me with no real argument other than negating mine. No examples of what you're talking about, not data point to chew on, fuck all.

It still an empty statement in and of itself.

> Different people have different goals and different aims. What meaning any particular person finds in an activity varies from person to person, and the wider and richer the activity is, the harder it is to make the case that there's only one right way to do it or that it means only one thing to everyone. Music and other arts are examples of such rich, wide-ranging activities.

Another completely empty statement. If I had a few days to live, I'd learn nothing from it. T'would be a waste of precious time and energy. Blanket statements, without form, without focus, without context are more meaningless than a false truth. Looks intelligent, but ultimately meaningless.

Bach. Bach ain't jamming (though in a sense he was capable of just that) but it's just as much Bach on the page as it is in the concert hall. It's not the only kind of music, but it's most definitely music, and would still be music even if nobody ever heard it, so long as the patterns and organizations inside it were preserved (I think it's less music if it was viewed as only an abstract pattern of ink marks on paper, but once those marks mean frequencies over time it's turning into music)

> and would still be music even if nobody ever heard it

I vehemently disagree. that's like writing when you don't know how to read. Possible, but meaningless.

I can't read sheet music. The condition to understanding Bach's music on your own is to first understand sheet music. So to make his music you must read and understand his language. Is that music? It's subject to whoever interprets it. If we go nearly extinct what would be a more useful piece of evidence of what music is, Bach's Sheets or Madonna's "LIKE A VIRGIN" MTV special?

Why do you think you can tell other people what is meaningful to them? Your statements are incredibly arrogant. And empty.

'The Desert Music' by Reich is really wonderful, worth giving a listen!