#everynoise

[freespiderjazz]

What's The Deal With Genre? Vol. 1

The Problems With Genre

Oftentimes when I'm really listless and happen to be on my laptop I go to one of my favorite sites:

This site is (or was :\) a website updated by a Spotify employee (Glen McDonald) that mapped a dizzying array of genres from across the spectrum of music and all over the world, mapped loosely by mood, and tempo, and a few other factors. If you're interested in a more in depth discussion on the raison d'etre and a bit of the mechanics of this now static site, they posted a great essay here:

https://everynoise.com/engenremap.html#otherthings

It's a tool, or more accurately a map, that you can lose yourself in for hours. Arabic Hip Hop? Zydeco? Nu Gabber? Gujarati Pop? Almost any genre you can think of (and many hundreds beyond the scope of my imagination at the time) are sprawled out in the gradient flowchart. Each links to a set of playlists, an Intro, Sound Of, and a Pulse (Most current releases). I've used everynoise to keep expanding my horizons and push myself out of my comfort zone, and for that I am eternally grateful. More recently however, and with it's passing into more of a relic than a breathing organism, I've turned to it with a more critical eye: hoping it can help me organize doubts and questions I have about music genres themselves.

The Everynoise Map: Organization For The Western Ear?

In the about page for the site, McDonald describes the maps organization in paradoxically visceral and vague terms. "The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier."

As a set of parameters these seem natural enough, and the chart follows it roughly. There is a broad vertical scroll from the totally synthetic/electronic/programmed all the way to (what dominates the bottom of the chart) the various folk music of the world. This element I think is one of the map's strengths. This is a parameter that isn't necessarily biased to a particular place's perception of music: it's a very clear variable of form of composition/recording. The left-right axis is far more subjective, and I find seems to be applied inconsistently through the course of the map.

Here the chart seems to map a certain kind of density, but I would maybe describe this more as 'Heavy-ness'. Having forms of post-metal and fusion black metal (which do tend to be more atmospheric, certainly dense) with hardcore (which I would definitely say is more punchy and spiky) seems to muddy the waters a bit. In their emotional energy and rhythmic content, I think it might even be fair to say some of these forms of hardcore probably have more in common with some of the hip hop genres all the way on the other side of the map than some of these loose, almost orchestral forms of black metal. This observation led to me noting another trend.

Wherever you scroll on this chart, pretty much invariably the center of field will be pop or rock music (occasionally jazz or RnB) but all in all largely *American* forms of popular music. Before I go too deep into this exploration, I want to say that I don't think this is a failure of this map. This is a tool for music exploration geared towards an English speaking audience that uses Spotify. Having a familiar strip of popular genres to then branch from is a solid method to encourage exploration in concentric circles out from sounds that are new, but ultimately familiar for the user. Most importantly, I think this observation about the data, that it centered global variations on American popular music made me ask two questions of myself and my perception of genre. 1. How much has American cultural hegemony shaped my understanding of musical genre? 2. How much has my engagement (both as an artist and a listener) with music as a commodity shaped my understanding of musical genre? Genre as Marketing

Spotify is a blitz capital firm that, ultimately, pays musicians fraction of a penny to host their music on a server that users pay a non-fractional amount of currency to access. The era of on demand access that music streaming has ushered in has also generated a new kind of demand in the musical marketplace. Music consumers want rabbit holes, they want algorithms that learn their habits and then suggest (in the aforementioned concentric circles) new sounds, principally in the form of playlists.

Long story short, Spotify needs your engagement: and it's hard to curate engagement without labels and boxes to pack songs into. I think this is the most confounding element of genre since the advent of recorded music. With this in mind, I think the distribution of the Everynoise data makes more sense. Perhaps unintentionally, the X axis of the graph also lines up with a certain palatability/pop factor. On this map, which is really a reflection of the models of Spotify, YouTube, and other music streaming platforms, the landing strip of western-familiar genres also becomes a layer that one has to sort through to get to music that is rooted away from this jazz/rock/pop core.

A massive factor in the way genre has been shaped is the commodification of Black American art forms (Jazz, Blues, Soul, Rock, RnB etc.) and it's global proliferation through the highly developed and monopolized record industry that developed in the United States between the 1940s-1960s. This created certain expectations for the consumer and for the artist that shaped the world's music. Aspiring musicians around the world were encouraged to emulate these American exports--traditional instruments being replaced with Spanish guitars and drum sets.

Nevertheless the world is richer for these artists additions to the canon of these genres--I would never wish them away. Some of my favorite music is the reinterpretation of these western music styles by artists from across the world. But as a historical process, I must be aware that there is a certain degree of homogeneity that may have been radically different in a global situation. Especially for artists trying to ply their craft full time, market pressures have a big effect. Technological changes in musical equipment (amplification especially) also cause seismic shifts in ensembles. Amplified guitars and basses demand the other instruments in the ensemble can keep up with them in volume, hence the carryover of the saxophone from the big band orchestras into early rock and roll (as one example). Especially with limited resources and capacity, many ensembles had to choose between electrifying or maintaining folk instruments--as amplifying/capturing the sound of an ensemble of acoustic instruments is a more capital-intensive venture than a 3 or 5 piece rock band. I believe a combination of the effect of cultural hegemony and the practical problems presented in marketing/arranging/recording different music funneled the 'overton window' of mainstream genres in the 20th century.

My Own Experience with Genre Pulling back to the personal, I think my initial grumblings of an issue with genre was from how you have to self-describe as an artist. Especially for a project like mine, it's hard to give people a quippy answer to what *kind* of music I make. In conversation, my usual approach is to say something like "I make all kinds of stuff!" or list a menagerie of tags, which may cause more confusion than clarification. Beyond listeners, elements in the industry are probably the most stringent about having some kind of genre, some way to sort your music onto the files of their label's catalogue or the proper stage in their festival lineup. Creatively though I find myself really dissatisfied with the process, or what labels I can cook up. I've posted under "psychedelic rock", "indie", and even "experimental"--but there doesn't seem to be a happy middle ground. Psychedelic rock identifies an element of my influence but gives the audience an inadequate impression of how the rest of the influences affect my style. Indie and Experimental broaden the umbrella but verge on meaningless concepts. What am I to expect when Flying Lotus, Can, Phillip Glass, and JPEGMAFIA are all considered experimental?

Perhaps what we find in genres like experimental and indie is the kernel of dissent against genre in general. They are less categories than they are boxes for music that are fundamentally incompatible with categorization. Is the answer the total dissolution of genre? Genre as Taxonomy To my previous question, I think my own answer is no. I believe genre must change and take new forms but I also acknowledge that it is more than a heuristic for audiences or a tool for marketing music as a commodity. Genre also serves to identify relationships between styles of music and scenes, the evolution of particular sounds. They are reflections of the history of music and reflective of the communities that named them. Whatever system replaces our current understanding of genre must take into account this important role of genre. When a genre has the suffix of jazz, I know it's in communication with a collective music tradition of shared songwriting and improvisation. When a genre has the suffix of -core I know it is evoking a specific aesthetic and is relating to a tight knit scene (evoking the common ancestor of -core genres, hardcore). This is vital information that deserves to be codified and collected along with the music we make. However, I feel like there is a better system that can reflect these connections, shared tapestries and histories, and set expectations around music more holistically. (Thanks for reading this massive ramble! I wanted to set the stage of my struggles with genre and explore some of my wider questions. The next post in this series will outline my ideas about an alternative system to categorize and organize music--but it will need more time to organize and visualize before I can share it here. Stay weird <3)

[zhabe]

Recognized a song today and i felt so knowledgable like yeah that’s Mona Ki Ngi Xica by Bonga

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Actually going through the 8tracks caps folder and. god I miss being able to have a place for music that wasn't algorithmically driven

[noonbeam17]

girlie wait! wait! dont leave! there are so many nasty guitar solos out in the world that you havent even conceived of

[zekkopunks]

I still have no idea what the name is for that oddly specific music genre I like but chiptune rock will have to do for now

[wavetapper]

viscerally unappealing I do not want to scroll through a tik tok feed of harry styles music videos that sounds like a saw trap designed specifically to torture me

[incineraryperiphery]

please do yourself a favor and listen to more non-english songs there are so many people with gorgeous voices making music out there that you get to listen to with your own ears and its wonderful

[enbyzombies2]

[a tumblr reply from user doeyedmantis reading, "why do people keep asking you for music recs when spotify is right there" /end id]

can you recommend some hip hop and rap for us blorbo picturers? frankly im just not exposed to it enough but i always enjoy what i listen to

despite its brevity that first sentence is genuinely such a rich text. genuinely fascinating implications of rap and hip hop being framed as specifically outside of the bounds of the "blorbo picturers," a phrase presumably meant to encapsulate what the asker considers to be the "typical" fandom blogger and with which they explicitly identify themself (note "us blorbo picturers"). the presumption that normative participation in fandom precludes knowledge of and familiarity with rap is, to say the least, a loaded one, which bears out years of formal and anecdotal analysis by nerds of color (NOC, if you will) that construct fandom as a space that treats whiteness as default and is thus often alienating if not outright outright hostile to NOC. in this essay I will

[charl0ttan]

Hi! I was wondering, have you ever heard of a website called Every Noise At Once? It's a site that has an enormous list of every documented genre and subgenres of music. It even has lists of artists if you click on certain genres and example songs! It sometimes isn't super accurate but it's fun to poke around in!

yesssss i was obsessed to dangerous levels for yearsssss my handle on rateyourmusic is actually everynoise lol

[post-punk-revival]

Pleaseee (if you want to) tell me about eggpunk music (no pressure but I'm fascinated)

So I'm not actually a big listener of egg punk, I just know about it as an (actual) subgenre of punk, and have looked it up before. The name came out of 2010s Internet meme humor but the music and scene surrounding it is real. It's mostly like, lo-fi "eh whatever" Midwestern DIY turned up to 10, and apparently heavily inspired by Devo. Sound-wise it seems closely modeled after the garage rock ethos. Like literally recorded in somebody's garage with bargain bin instruments.

Spotify's made for you mixes are always a bad way to understand a particular genre they're named after because those are algorithmically generated based on listening patterns and not actually based on typical genre standards. The Sounds of Spotify (the account attached to the extinct site Everynoise) still has a playlist for every single genre tracked by Spotify and while some of them are certainly bullshit, it's a much better thing to peruse to get a sense of a particular genre.

I do not have any recommendations for what egg punk artists to listen to because again I do not listen-listen to egg punk, as in seek it out, I just know about it because I snap up any music that crosses my path like an auditory opportunist. And I don't know what the big names are in egg punk

[clockwork-arcana]

For those of y'all who don't dislike these genres, but just haven't found anything that stands out to you enough to listen to regularly, let me introduce you to my good friend Every Noise at Once, particularly its pages on rap, jazz, country, blues, ska, reggae, and turbofolk. It's a very quick way to get into new bands and genres, two clicks drops you into the middle of a song to get a taste and see if you want to listen to more by that band or artist.

So if you're like me, and don't listen to rap simply because you don't know how to explore rap to find the rap you like, well, now you don't have an excuse.

i hate this sites music taste so much its literally Racism The Music Taste site. you guys dont like rap you dont like jazz you dont like country you dont like blues you dont like ska you dont like reggae you cannot CONCEPTUALIZE listening to foreign artists you dont even know what turbofolk is you cant conceive of music existing out of anglosphere you think that mcr is punk and its the end-all of definition of "punk" for you i hate everyone here like WHAT music do you people even listen to what the fuck is left

[autistic-shaiapouf]

I also have 5 consecutive days off coming up so what if I went full insane and went through my entire watch later playlist to sift through what is and isn't music

[haveyouheardthisband]

do you have an rym page?

why, im a terminally online autistic music enjoyer, of course i do 😁 https://rateyourmusic.com/~everynoise

[tthegirlonthemoon]

Nate Sib Will Save Pop in 2025: Rambling on Boylife and the 'Great Genre Recession'

If nate sib keeps kimj and Hollis as his producers, I think he has the potential to go mainstream this year.

He’s bringing back the pop everyone misses with new sounds through Hollis’ edm production and kimj’s experience composing for hyperpop artists. Nate’s rise to fame shouldn’t be viewed as a rehash of Justin Bieber, but rather an evolution of Bieber's previous sound. I think his music is new enough to have the potential to go mainstream, unlike a lot of what’s been bogging down other scenes. There’s such a large gap between innovation in other genres compared to just pop. Nathan Subbiondo WILL finally bring something new and do a good job with it––literally listen to his live vocals.

I also think the music industry as a whole has the potential to change because of boylife (I'm not too sure about Roman but he’s only released one song maybe he just needs time to release some more). 2hollis to edm/witchouse/rage rap is what NOVAGANG and quinn were to hyperpop/underground back in 2021.

Like, you could put on "i dont want any friends in the first place" by Quinn, and it'd activate some kind of sleeper agent where I’d be able to recite all the lyrics without a second thought. Quinn, NOVAGANG, and saturn changed so many things in music as a whole, even if they were only participating in an underground scene. I’d argue that the strange resurgence of sped-up music (WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY KNOWN AS NIGHTCORE) can be attributed to 2021 hyperpop where every artist was pitching up their vocals and speeding up their beats. 

For boylife, their defining feature is how they are devoid of a single genre. From the start, Hollis has been unbounded by genres and labels––like the digicore beef in 2022. This has stayed true through all his stages (drippysoup, osx / chainmail, current 2hollis). Every article or professional interview you can find involving Hollis describes him with really random genres that jump all over the place. Literally, in the beginning of this ramble, I described him as edm/witchouse/rage rap. None of these connect cohesively or traditionally. He is everything and anything he wants to be. Not a single project of his has been the same, even though he’s been producing for over 5 years. 

It’s the same situation with nate sib. Most people attach the label of pop to his music, but his music takes many influences from edm and hyperpop because of his producers. Though, if you tried hard enough, you'd probably be able to find 50 random niche genres to label him with.

The advent of Spotify’s useless daylist feature has diluted the meaning of every genre. Quite frankly, I'm SO sick of labels getting misconstrued and transformed until they are devoid of any attachment to their origins. I don't want to get too off-topic, but as usual, the blame for most of this predicament goes to short-form content and microtrends. The incessant algorithms need more content, and the only way to mass-produce 'unique' content is to take as many sub-cultures as possible and dilute them for easy consumption.

BACK TO MY QUALMS WITH SPOTIFY: 

This year’s Spotify wrapped did not feature a genre burger, it did not feature any genre rankings, and it only showed a daylist rehash of buzzwords and trends. What do you mean I listened to "pumpkin spice downtown girl based slay" on Tuesday afternoons... Where are my actual genre descriptions? Labels for music have been oversaturated. There are simply too many now to be able to meaningfully categorize music. In 2023, Spotify recognized 6291 unique genres (EveryNoise). You may be wondering how it's possible for daylists to screw up genre labelling so terribly when there are over 6k distinct genres to use. Still, once again, the implementation of unnecessary AI has ruined things for everyone.

Spotify seems to have finally completed the process of discontinuing everything I worked on by switching the "genres" in the Spotify API from my human-supervised genre system to ML-assigned keyword tags. This is great if you like ML more than music, and don't mind having folk metal tagged as "folk", funk carioca tagged as "funk", and disco polo tagged as "disco".

–Glenn, owner of EveryNoise (layoff from Spotify in 2024)

The specifics of each sub-genre and their sub-sub-genres were the key to assigning labels to music preceding 2024, but the new AI has distorted the definitions of these labels. By using algorithms to sort music into moods/vibes/genres for daylists, the AI algorithm also commonly miscategorizes genres or has a muddled understanding of the keywords it is sorting with.

2hollis cannot be labelled, no matter how many different types of genres people try to attach to him. Everything he puts out is different. Therefore, his career as an artist cannot be defined by our current genre system. I think boylife has the opportunity to influence others to move away from constraining themselves to certain genres, and this will lead us to an age of fusion. Every album will be fusions of vastly different genres, allowing far more creative control over how music sounds. The age of sticking to specific labels for easy sorting is reaching an end because these labels have close to no meaning anymore (is this like inflation but for music??).

Who cares if shoegaze and chiptune aren't supposed to go together? Try merging them anyway (Antenna To The Afterworld by Sonny & The Sunsets was ahead of its time). For artists who don’t choose fusion, their music will be easier to label as the excessive fusion from others will inevitably lead us to something I view as a genre reset. We're in the genre recession currently, but the genre depression (genre fusion) will slowly lead us to an age of prosperity (genres once again have true meaning).

[alphabetcompletionist]

what is "mexican metal" btw

i'm charting for clone hero that one letter song i mentioned before, Z by The Warning, and you know fucking what? it doesn't even have a Z in it. i can't believe they'd lie to me

ABCDEFGHI KLMNO RSTUVW YZ

22/26

ABCDEFGHI KLMNOP RSTUVW Y

22/26 song

[doyoulikethis-metal-song]

hello! sorry if you already have these songs in the queue or if others have suggested but please feel free to use :)

Bathory: - Woman of Dark Desires - Necromancy

Behemoth: -Once Upon A Pale Horse -O Father O Satan O Sun! -Ov Fire And The Void

Butthole Surfers: -Who Was In My Room Last Night?

Candlemass: -Bewitched -Under the Oak

Celtic Frost: -A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh

Deicide: -In the Minds of Evil

Dethklok: -Rejoin -Andromeda -Murmaider -Ghostqueen -Aortic Desecration -Awaken

Firebreather: -Sorrow -Closed Gate

Ghost -Mary On A Cross -Square Hammer

Gojira: -Silvera -Flying Whales

Gorgoroth: -Awakening -Radix Malorum

Hellripper: -All Hail the Goat -Bastard of Hades

Korn: -Did My Time

Lamb of God -The Undertow

Mayhem: -Freezing Moon

Megadeth: -Tornado of Souls -Take No Prisoners -Five Magics -Holy Wars...The Punishment Due

Meshuggah: -Bleed -Rational Gaze

Ozzy Osbourne: -Road to Nowhere

Pantera: -I'm Broken

Sleep Token: -The Summoning -Granite -Alkaline

Slipknot: -Duality - Slipknot -Spit It Out - Slipknot -Psychosocial - Slipknot

Tool - Forty Six & 2

The HU -Wolf Totem

Type O Negative -I Don't Wanna Be Me -Wolf Moon -Black No. 1 -Christian Woman -Dead Again

I'm sorry to go off on your ask in particular, but I get so many like this. Out of 5 suggestions I get, there are maybe 2 that are actually metal. And, you know, it's fine if we disagree on whether Type O Negative or modern Meshuggah are metal, those are fine suggestions. But The Hu? Korn? Sleep Token? Butthole Surfers? GHOST??? (...fucking Dethklok, too)

At least there are some good suggestions in this, and I will add them and I appreciate them. But can you guys please stop just indiscriminately sending me songs off your playlist that aren't quite pop? I don't want people to be apprehended from sending me stuff, but if you don't know what metal is, then at least give it a quick lookup on everynoise or something.