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Why I don't bother with genre...

cpt_paranoia

cpt_paranoia

Addicted Member
When I ripped my CD collection back in 2010, and with all subsequent purchase rips, I decided to be very minimal with sub-genre classification; it was just too hard to decide, and I didn't really understand all the weird names I sometimes encountered. It was hard enough deciding between Rock and Pop... I did manage to distinguish 'Electronic' from 'Electronica & Dance'.

I recently found this site, now sadly in hibernation, that makes me think I made the right choice...

 
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I just put everything in alphabetical order and thumb through it all. CD's, LP's, and tape.
I just don't have the patience to break it all down into genre's.
Especially with the files in my computer. My hats off to anyone that has the patience to do so.
 
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Lavane said:
I just put everything in alphabetical order and thumb through it all. CD's, LP's, and tape.
I just don't have a patience to break it all down into genre's.
Especially with the files in my computer. My hats off to anyone that has the patience to do so.
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This

Hell, just with Metal I would have about 30 sections :oops:
 
I have 3 Disco albums to remind me of the days when I installed discos in Old MExico and in Texas and New Mexico. I really don't consider the three Presley albums to be Rock either as he is singing Christmas, Church Hymns and Blues. I do have a Dubbie Brothers Album and a Cat Stevens album but thats it. I do have about 20 folk albums and 12 Alpert Albums, but they are not rock. I have some Lettermen, Sandpiper , Hi-lo, and Four Freshman albums where they sing rock songs but in a totally different style. So only two rock albums and they are mixed in with all the rest of popular music albums in alphabetical order. Is Chicago considered Rock and Roll? I just call them Big brass Pop albums. How about Chuck Mangeone? What is hard for me to classify is CW Rock-abilly. But I don't have any of that either. Dolly maybe a great CW composer but I can't stand her voice. I do like Crystal Gail once in a while, but I don't have any of her albums either.

Movie sound tracks are in another area and if there is any Rock on those I tolerate the sound being more interested in the story than the music.
 
Electronic music and metal seem to have hundreds of sub-genres, and other styles have many as well. I don't really think about music in those terms and it seems like so many of my favorite artists are not so easy to classify, which is part of their appeal (eclectic is good in my book!). I have all kinds of stuff in my music collection, from rock to jazz, to fusion, progressive, electronic, country, folk, African, Latin, blues, Brazilian, etc and all of it is organized alphabetically A-Z regardless of genre. The one exception I make is with classical music, where I haven't decided if stuff should be filed according to artist or composer, so I just have everything all together, not sorted in any way at all... which works fine (at least for now) as my collection of that music is so small.
 
I agree, WAY too much time and I don't necessarily agree with where some are "put".

I'm not a "random/shuffle" listener anyway, so a shuffle list of a specific genre isn't on my list of things to do anyway.
 
A couple years back I posted this thread, in which i suggested genres benefited the music industry but did nothing for musicians or consumers.

Genres

Thesis: Cubbyholing music into genres has served the music business more than it has the consumer of music. There are only two kinds of music: good music (that which is fresh and inspired) and bad music (that which is trite and formulaic). Discuss.
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Lavane said:
I just put everything in alphabetical order and thumb through it all. CD's, LP's, and tape.
I just don't have a patience to break it all down into genre's.
Especially with the files in my computer. My hats off to anyone that has the patience to do so.
Click to expand...
same. Granted, digital files are another thing entirely, subject to random Gracenote classifications. I have too few actual media to bother with classifying them. Alpha by artist and date of release are sufficient. if I had more than 500, I might treat it differently, but since I'm space limited to about 200 physical vinyls, genre doesn't really matter. it's music
 
RunOutGroove said:
Electronic music and metal seem to have hundreds of sub-genres, and other styles have many as well. I don't really think about music in those terms and it seems like so many of my favorite artists are not so easy to classify, which is part of their appeal (eclectic is good in my book!). I have all kinds of stuff in my music collection, from rock to jazz, to fusion, progressive, electronic, country, folk, African, Latin, blues, Brazilian, etc and all of it is organized alphabetically A-Z regardless of genre. The one exception I make is with classical music, where I haven't decided if stuff should be filed according to artist or composer, so I just have everything all together, not sorted in any way at all... which works fine (at least for now) as my collection of that music is so small.
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That sounds like my collection. It just has to sound good to me. I don't care about genre. Well, maybe country & western. As for as that genre goes, I don't really have anything in my collection. Maybe an album by the Tractors? I do have some what you would call country music I guess. But it can be anything. Some of its pretty fast with some killer fiddle and guitar work. My collection is all over the map just kept in alphabetical order.
 
also, one of the few great things about middle age is that when we were kids, if you were into music, you were supposed to be into just one thing: metal kids listened to metal, punk kids listened to, you guessed it, punk & post punk and the rap & R&B kids stayed in their lane. Much of my listening to music friends outside of the bounds of my social group had to be on the down low. As I progressed into my twenties, I expanded my range, but on an obsessive level- when I got into 50's and 60's jazz, that was pretty much all I listened to, ditto for alt country, indie rock, underground hip hop and electronica. for a point in the 00's, I nearly stopped listening to music altogether. Now, in my 50's, I have reconnected with a number of my music from my teens, college and grad school years and I've found that none of us care much for those distinctions; what's good is good. In a given week, my friends and I will listen to Steely Dan, Boards Of Canada, Sleep, Elder, Tame Impala, Olivia Rodrigo, Queens of the Stone Age, Wu Tang Clan, Wilco, Slayer, the Feelies, Merle Haggard, Charles Mingus and whatnot... not giving a $hit is so freeing.
 
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Gigantic said:
also, one of the few great things about middle age is that when we were kids, if you were into music, you were supposed to be into just one thing: metal kids listened to metal, punk kids listened to, you guessed it, punk & post punk and the rap & R&B kids stayed in their lane. Much of my listening to music outside of the bounds of my social group had to be on the down low. As I progressed into my twenties, I expanded my range, but on an obsessive level- when I got into 50's and 60's jazz, that was pretty much all I listened to, ditto for alt country, indie rock, underground hip hop and electronica. for a point in the 00's, I nearly stopped listening to music altogether. Now, in my 50's, I have reconnected with a number of my music from my teens, college and grad school years and I've found that none of us care much for those distinctions; what's good is good. In a given week, my friends and I will listen to Steely Dan, Boards Of Canada, Sleep, Elder, Tame Impala, Olivia Rodrigo, Queens of the Stone Age, Wu Tang Clan, Wilco, Slayer, the Feelies, Merle Haggard, Charles Mingus and whatnot... not giving a $hit is so freeing.
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I have always listened to everything, but I am weird.
 
GChief said:
I have always listened to everything, but I am weird.
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I guess that was my point. back when actual mixtapes were a thing, I'd make a mixtape that had Billie Holiday and Metallica on the same side, with a range of genres in between, curated in a way that made it seem normal and natural, but I was aware that my interest in music was beyond casual and ventured into the realm of excessive, obsessive geekdom. It was because of that, in high school, I got a job at my local independent record store, where that was an advantage: I was expected to be knowledgeable about most of the genres we carried. nobody at the store paid too much attention to top-40, the Malls had that on lock. However, we had to know Jazz, Blues, R n B, Hip-Hop and Rap, Metal, Punk, Post Punk, Industrial, Goth and all of the so-called underground music that people came into our store to find. my bosses would give me homework assignments based on the music I was listening to at the time, history lessons and rabbit holes... "Oh, you like the replacements? you need to listen to Big Star; If you like Big Star, you really need to listen to Badfinger. while you're at it, listen to the Stone's Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers, then listen to Gram Parsons and Flying Burrito Brothers. Oh, all that 4AD crap you like? You should listen to Tim Buckley and Nick Drake..." so many rabbit holes, chasing the influences of the flavor du jour, something that I still do to this very day. Thankfully, my streaming service puts almost everything at my fingertips and I can save my hard earned money on the things I really, really find interesting.
 
I pretty much ignore genre, as defined by others. All my music is ripped and stored on a drive. I organize my music in folders based on what I like to listen to at one time. That is, my classic rock stuff is in a separate folder structure than modern rock and heavy metal and jazz, etc.

I listen to music about 14 hours a day. I listen to random tracks (shuffled) to simulate the old FM album rock days (without ads). I use Simple Library Views in LMS so that I can combine the folders, if desired, and listen to the type of music that I am in the mood for.
 
My iTunes library has 32 genres, which is more than enough for me. In addition to Genres, I also have the capability to search by Artist, Albums, Songs, Compilations, Composers and Downloaded, depending on my mood. I've downloaded most of my CDs to the library, but unfortunately the Gracenote database sometimes gets the genre (among other things) wrong. I have to manually correct the album info so it will appear correctly when conducting searches
 
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Lavane said:
That sounds like my collection. It just has to sound good to me. I don't care about genre. Well, maybe country & western. As for as that genre goes, I don't really have anything in my collection. Maybe an album by the Tractors? I do have some what you would call country music I guess. But it can be anything. Some of its pretty fast with some killer fiddle and guitar work. My collection is all over the map just kept in alphabetical order.
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I haven't really become anything like a country music obsessive and have only really gotten into the genre at all in recent years. If I was more of a fan, I'd have a lot more records as it seems that country is one of those things where old LPs can be found on the cheap. I don't really like any of the contemporary popular stuff at all, but I do dig some old classics like Hank Williams (no greater!) and Buck Owens. Having not really checked out Jerry Lee Lewis's more famous rockabilly music, I bought an old LP of him in later years doing his country stuff and I have to admit that it's a really satisfying listen. I like old bluegrass stuff too. Beyond the quality of the playing, singing and songwriting, there's something about old country music that puts me into a certain time and place that I dig. I think that's true for a lot of music that I enjoy, that the vibe, or really the atmosphere that it exists in is a big part of the appeal. Like I can't go to that particular place or go back in time, but I can experience a bit of the feeling that it was like at that place and time.
 
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