Chesterfield Online Forum

General Category => Entertainment => Topic started by: therealjr on July 28, 2014, 09:32:39 PM

Title: Musical genres
Post by: therealjr on July 28, 2014, 09:32:39 PM

This one has had me thinking for a while.
Who exactly decides what genre a piece of music fits into.
For example I might hear a piece of music and have it described as jazz (or blues, country, folk, r and b, soul etc really doesn't matter) by the dj/presenter. A while later they play another piece of music and label it as the same genre. But it sounds totally different and certainly not what I interpret as being typical.
So who gets to decide? Does the artist say I'm Blues, soul, country etc and therefore that's how you label my music? Or is it the so called experts who get to hand out labels?

Title: Re: Musical genres
Post by: Fly on July 28, 2014, 10:05:04 PM

Might it be the music industry when deciding how best to describe a song for the best profit for them.

Title: Re: Musical genres
Post by: Slacker on July 29, 2014, 06:24:11 AM

A lot seem to default to blues on the computer, no idea why.

Many of mine get listed as "Alternative" which seems to cover a multitude of sins

My iPod has a smart playlist for every year, 2002 & 2006 are the most prolific

Title: Re: Musical genres
Post by: simondjuk on July 29, 2014, 01:00:04 PM

I had an album ages ago and the genre was labelled as 'sh*t'.

They might have thought so, but its a great album...well I think so.