Ever notice how some people have no idea what they're listening to? Bands of the same era get mistaken, people don't seem to know the names of songs. I downloaded a track once called "Journey - Sailing Song.mp3"; it was Styx's "Come Sail Away". Is it paranoia on the part of the person sharing, as in some sort of obscure filesharing code I'm not cool enough to know about? Some holdover protocol from the first Napster boom?

Really, never let your curiousity get the best of you.

But what's more disturbing to me, of course, is commerce. Last week I ripped and burned a copy of Gwen Stefani's Love.Angel.Music.Baby for my partner, who wanted a copy that could get beat up in the car.

Coincidentally, today I'm listening to a directory that contains almost two days' worth of stuff labeled "Alternative", mostly by my hand in a failed attempt to maintain clear distinctions between genres. (As I fix my regard for "rock" and "rock & roll", which is at the heart of the problem, some of the 677 songs will come out. And a few others might be added.)

And I didn't download the album, so I hadn't yet tinkered with the genre label yet. Not only did it come up in the "Alternative" directory, but its official classification according to CDDB is "Alternative & Punk".

Is the record company responsible for that? I didn't get the multiple-listing window that comes up if there's more than one match.

I'm hard-pressed to find a time past 1982 or so when this album would be called "alternative". I actually hold the "punk" assignation in contempt, for what is the point of classifying music at all if the classifications are either arbitrary or market-driven?

Jesus' tits, it's a freakin' Gwen Stefani album. Is it going to sell that many fewer copies if you call it "pop", like it is?

• • •

As a fan of Boiled in Lead, for instance, could I stack up songs like "Fuck the Circus", "Pig Dog Daddy", "Red Lights and Neon" and their strikingly morbid arrangement of "Twa Corbies", and call them alternative? But what about their rich traditional catalog that isn't modernized like "Twa Corbies"? There's "Galtee Set", "The Spanish Lady/The Britches With the Stitches", "My Son John", a stunning track called "Cuz Mapfumo" (named for Cuz Teahan and Thomas Mapfumo, whose songs are woven together for the arrangment), "Shopetski Kopanista", "Pontiaka", the glorious "Jamie Across The Water" ... the list is long. Of course, what can be said of their more recognizable cover songs? "Over Under Sideways Down", "State Trooper", "Stop! Stop! Stop!"?

Or does their sense of humor and exploitation of "traditional" as a modern genre count for anything? "The Microorganism", "Tom and Jerry/The Nine Points of Roguery", "Robin's Complaint" (lyrics by Jane Yolen), "Army (Dream Song)", "Rasputin", "Hook 'em Cow" (partial lyrics discovered in the pocket of a jacket for sale at a secondhand store)? Certainly such humor leans toward "alternative".

But let's get serious. I don't call them a folk band, and "traditional" is far too narrow. I affectionately defer to early conceptions of the band as involving the words "Irish" and "punk", but while I would not disparage punk, "Ugros (Springtime)" is simply not a punk song; the punk influence is their sense of humor and tendency to record occasional hard-noise tracks. (The recording of "Red Lights and Neon", for instance, is said to have nearly set the studio on fire; literally: the vocals are cycled through something like 88 tube preamps, creating a stunning, gritty effect.) Not as narrow as traditional or even folk, the punk label is still inappropriate.

The band is referred to as "worldbeat" in some of its press, but the breadth of that classification renders it nearly meaningless. It is fair, to a degree, though. Influences include range from the Balkans to France to Ireland to Texas and Idaho and Minnesota, up into Canada and back through centuries.

They're a rock band, but what does that mean on the one hand to those who listen to Counting Crows and Live (both automatically classified as rock when I ripped the discs to my hard drive), and to the other those who slap the word on the Scorpions?

BiL is listed, by my hand, as "unclassifiable"; they have a directory currently of five hours to themselves, and stand as a ringing testament to the failure of organizational classifications of music.

Imagine the exposure the band could get marketing themselves as an alternative band. Putting a bunch of fifty year-old drinkers in front of the twenty-something crowd with a stamp of hipness approval sounds like a fine idea, right?

Perhaps they are the true alternative band. Defiant of labels and in love with their music and their hot cock.

Now that I've made the joke, it doesn't seem so impossible. They're far more alternative than Gwen Stefani, but I would fall over laughing if one day I hopped over to the iTunes music store and saw BiL as the featured alternative band.

• • •

I've babbled and bitched and plugged enough. Your turn. Tell us your thoughts about music classification in the 21st century, when technology can put more music before us than ever before.

I think the music genres are marketing driven. Like with Gwen Stefani, having her music called Alternative is a throw back to her singing in No Doubt. If you're browsing through the Alternative section at a store and you see Gwen's album, you might buy it just because of how good No Doubt sounded. If Gwen's album was in the Pop section, you would lose a little bit of the market.

As with any product, if you tell people what it is, some will start to think it as how you want.

I classify my music according to mood, content, or whatever strikes me when I hear it.

This is sort of how I do it:

Chillout
Angry sounding
Transparent pop
Social rap
Transparent rap
Classic and arena rock
Pop rock
Repetitive techno or club
Party music
Upbeat miscellenous
Kickass
Epic

Interesting thread tiassa. In all seriousness, I've simply given up classifying my music. Strike that, that's not correct. I now have only 2 categories: music I like, and music I don't like. The overall trend of homogeneity that you've noticed, although initially annoying, has had some interesting side-effects I find. First, I no longer listen to music on the radio, as all stations now sound the same. Second, I now have a much simpler, more meaningful organization of my music.
The one other comment I have is that I do tend to find that when I do listen to music now, it all tends to blur together, and if I try to think back I barely have any recollection of what i listened to. In all seriousness, I think this has to do with the fact that we no longer have album sides (seriously showing my age now...). Albums used to be crafted in a particularly duological manner, and in retrospect, I feel this gave an album a sense of structure. To this day if I happen to hear an old song, once it ends my mind naturally 'moves on' immediately to the next track. Similarly, I still identify a song as 'track 4, second side'.
Weird.

Each form of music has its own followers that enjoy whatever it is they like about it. Some people call certain music different things as has been noted here already which is the way it should be for each of us has an ear for the music we enjoy. To make a definition as to the exact term for music that changes from time to time is very difficult to keep up with. There are certain forms of music that are easily defined like classical (Beethoven), blues (B.B. King) and big band (Artie Shaw).

I simply do not know all of the subdivisions of "rock"....
I try to classify by region of origin/language. Then, it's "folk," "folkish," "classical," "classic-like," and further divided by region/language. Whatever doesn't fit simply sits there. I accidentally acquired some jazz, so there's a jazz folder.

music is music. what do you need genre classification for.

especially in the age of digital music.

You can just search from artist or song name.

Besides, nobody arranges there CD colleciton in genre order.

Do they????

I do.... Well, like my folders: genre, language/region.... My classification of genres is nothing "formally recognized" as genres.

do you use them though?

I usually like to listen to one album or group. not genres.

Or i put my music list on random.

If a bad song comes up i skip forward.

My lengthy playlists consist of groups of artists who sound similar. I don't put classical music or rock onto my trance playlists. My folk playlists also consist of a group of artists from the same region.
I don't like random, I arrange songs sometimes.

My music is devided in influences. Like:

<> Sounds with a touch of history
<> Sounds of gothic lips
<> Sounds of classical charm
<> Sounds of foreign folk
<> Sounds of rock
<> Sounds of dark places
<> Sounds of nature
<> Sounds of mystics and peace
etc, etc

So when I want to listen to something that is classic or sounds like it, I have my classic sound folder, same goes for all others.

I also listen only by albums, not by songs
and the least I want is that an improper album for the mood starts playing.

Well, I also think that all those genres are somewhat annoying. But there is a difference between pop, alternative and classical, as the three big folders in which music can be put.

Pop is not a definite style, it is just popular music, so that would mean it is what Mtv shows all day long. It is also a classification by the chart lists, whatever is up there, meaning popular, can be counted to pop music.
Hence, pop is an amorph labeling of mainstream music taste.

Alternative is the label put on less popular music, this would include Heavy Metal, Rock, Jazz, Blues, etc. But it is just a step away from pop music. Some decades ago, Rock was all the rage, so it was pop music at that time. With such undefined boundaries it is a bit hard to affix labels to all of this, so Gwen Stefani might be alternative, just like Bathory is alternative...

Classical; well, here, all the timeless classics can be found, Wagner, Skrijabin, etc.

These are the three big folders in which music can be filed, but getting into the exact definition is useless work, so I will not go deeper into this.

So.. was Mozart pop at some point of a time? :D
Sorry, I do follow your thought, it just seems a funny twist.

Supposedly, if that classification existed contemporary to Mozart, then yes, he might have been the king of pop during his time. ;)

And what about the classical sounding music that is composed nowadays?
For example Kenji Kawaii has some outstanding pieces.

As I said, if it is not mainstream, than it just is not pop. Of course, if Mtv would start broadcasting classical music and all those trend making institutions go along and the people start diggin classical again (not just any people, but the focus group between 10 and 30), then it would be pop, otherwise...it will just stay classic.

No, I was more into -> is it classical or alternative then. ;) :D
So anyways, you devide music in pop and not pop. That makes two folders then, not 3,
i.e. nowaday classical music is a subgenre of alternative music. :m:

I read that definition somewhere, so I would not claim copyright on it. Still, if you want to have two instead of three folders...that's ok I guess. I normally divide music into: 1) Music I do like. and 2) Music I do not like.

:D :D I think we can agree on that.

p.s. My devision is seen a few posts up.
p.p.s. I don't have "sounds of pop" :D

Most musical genres are variants on rock... only metal and ambient are different in that respect.