Music Genres

The most misused word in casual music discussion

⊕This is a part of my mostly complete, probably unnecessarily complex, system for classifying and filing music in my ever-growing collection.

Music Genres

One day, a long time ago, I got really upset about how terrible classification of music was, particularly on the internet. Not just file tagging, which was garbage for sure, but how people spoke about music in genres and styles. There seemed to be zero understanding of what was meant by any other person, and every style or genre moniker attached to a piece of music seemed to be primarily about fulfilling a particular emotional need in the speaker, not in talking about music as a specific set of qualities that could be compared and contrasted.

General Rules For Genres

Genres are applied at the album or song level. Genres do not apply to bands. Yes, many bands only play in one genre, but that is not a good predictor of future output. As a matter of fact, I kind of look askance at supposedly serious music writers who talk about genres as if they were defining features of bands.
Songs have only one genre. An album can be comprised of songs in different genres, but by definition, a song belongs only to one genre. For my purposes though, I apply genre at the album level almost exclusively.
Genre classification is far more subjective and personal than we generally think it is. Whole internet forums exist just to debate what is and is not a certain genre of music.

My Genre Organization

An experimental tree view of my music categorization system, from Grouping all the way down to Style/Micro-genre. This takes into account only music already in my collection, and is not complete. It is however, complete for my purposes, and should illustrate how I organize music.

ID3v1 genres (including later Winamp extensions) are given in parentheses where they match. Unused ID3v1 genre tags are listed at the end of the tree view.

Art Music
- Avant-garde
  - Improvised Music
    
    Creative Orchestra
    
    Free Improvisation
    
    Structured Improvisation
  - Modern Composition
    
    Computer Music
    
    Experimental
    
    Microtonal
    
    Minimalism
    
    Musique Actuelle
    
    Musique Concrete
    
    Post-minimalism
    
    Tape Music
  - Sound Art
    
    Conceptual Art
    
    Mixed Media
    
    Noise (ID3v1: 39)
    
    Process-Generated
    
    Radio Works
    
    Sound Art
    
    Sound Collage
    
    Sound Sculpture
- Chinese Art Music
- European Art Music
  - Medieval
  - Renaissance
  - Baroque
  - Classical (ID3v1: 32)
  - Romantic
  - Modernist
  - Post-modernist
- Indian Art Music
- Turkish Art Music
Folk Music
- Asian Folk
- Australian Folk
- European Folk
- Middle Eastern & North African Folk
- North American Folk
  - Alt-Folk
  - Anti-Folk
  - Appalachian Folk
  - Blues (ID3v1: 00)
  - Chamber Folk
  - Folk Jazz
  - Neofolk
  - New Acoustic
  - Political Folk
  - Progressive Folk
  - Urban Folk
- South American Folk
- Sub-Saharan Folk
Pop Music (ID3v1: 13)
- African Pop
- Asian Pop
- Avant Pop
- Caribbean Pop
  - Calypso
  - Cha-cha-chá
  - Dancehall
  - Merengue
  - Reggae (ID3v1: 16)
  - Rocksteady
  - Rumba
  - Salsa
  - Ska (ID3v1: 21)
  - Son Cubano
  - Soca
- Comedy Music
- Country (ID3v1: 02)
- Easy Listening
- Electronic (ID3v1: 52)
  - Ambient (ID3v1: 26)
  - Bass Music (ID3v1: 41)
  - Breakbeat
  - Disco (ID3v1: 04)
  - Downtempo
  - Drum and Bass
  - Dub
  - Electro
  - Electroacoustic
  - Electronic Rock
  - Electronica
    
    Trip-hop (ID3v1: 27)
  - Hardcore
  - Hardstyle
  - Hi-NRG
  - House (ID3v1: 35)
  - Indietronica
  - Industrial (ID3v1: 19)
    
    Techno-industrial (ID3v1: 51)
  - IDM
  - Jungle
  - Post-Disco
  - Synth-Pop
  - Techno (ID3v1: 18)
    
    Acid (ID3v1: 34)
  - Trance (ID3v1: 31)
  - UK Garage
  - Rawcore
- Euro Pop
- Hip Hop (ID3v1: 07)
  - Rap (ID3v1: 15)
  - Southern Hip-Hop
- Jazz (ID3v1: 08)
- Latin Pop
- MENA Pop
- New Age (ID3v1: 10)
  - Space Music / Space Ambient (ID3v1: 44)
- Rock (ID3v1: 17)
  - Alternative Rock (ID3v1: 20/40)
    
    Britpop
    
    Grunge (ID3v1: 06)
    
    Indie Rock
  - Beat
  - Experimental Rock
    
    Art Rock
    
    Industrial Rock
    
    Post-Punk
    
    Gothic Rock (ID3v1: 49)
    
    No Wave
    
    Noise Rock
    
    Post-Rock
  - Folk Rock
  - Garage Rock
  - Glam Rock
  - Hard Rock
  - Jazz Rock
  - Metal (ID3v1: 09)
    
    Alt Metal
    
    Black Metal
    
    Death Metal (ID3v1: 22)
    
    Doom Metal
    
    Folk Metal
    
    Heavy Hardcore
    
    Heavy Metal
    
    Industrial Metal
    
    Post-metal
    
    Progressive Metal
    
    Thrash Metal
  - New Wave
    
    Darkwave (ID3v1: 50)
  - Progressive Rock
  - Psychedelic Rock
  - Punk Rock (ID3v1: 43)
  - Rock and Roll
  - Southern Rock
  - Stoner Rock
- R&B / Soul
  - Blue-Eyed Soul
  - Funk (ID3v1: 05)
  - Rhythm & Blues (ID3v1: 14)
  - Soul (DI3v1: 42)
Religious Music
- Chants
- Devotional Song
- Hymn
  - Gospel (ID3v1: 38)
- Liturgical Music
- Meditation Music (ID3v1: 45)
- Ritual Music
Incidental Music
- Background Music
- Soundtrack (ID3v1: 24)
- Video Game Music (ID3v1: 36)
Occasional Music
- Anthems
- Celebration Music
- Dances (ID3v1: 03)
- Holiday
- Military
- Seasonal

Unused ID3v1 Genre tags

I have not made use of the following ID3v1 tags, primarily because they represent radio playlist formats, not muscial genres:

Classic Rock (IDv3v1: 01)
Oldies (ID3v1: 11)
Other (ID3v1: 12)
Pranks (ID3v1: 23)
Euro-techno (ID3v1: 25)
Vocal (ID3v1: 28)
Jazz & Funk (ID3v1: 29)
Fusion (ID3v1: 30)
Instrumental (ID3v1: 33)
Sound Clip (ID3v1: 37)
Instrumental pop (ID3v1: 46)
Instrumental Rock (ID3v1: 47)
Ethnic (ID3v1: 48)