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Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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!

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