Much as I'm loath to comment on anything that might be construed as promoting Spotify, this article by the BBC's Christian Brooks - which takes the announcement of the annual Spotify Wrapped results as a prompt to look into the contemporary meaning of genre in music - is a thought-provoking read.
On the one hand, tribalism seems to be on the wane, with listeners more inclined to broadmindedness, open to investigating and enjoying a wider variety of different types of music. Of course, musicians are themselves listeners, so, as Spotify's Sara Sesardic tells Brooks, "artists are becoming a lot more fluid with the kind of music they make, and ... genre, too, is becoming more fluid".
Just as listeners flit easily between radically different genres, then, artists like Young Fathers tear down barriers, blending styles without constraint in their own idiosyncratic fashion. The insane mash-ups of hyperpop are the consequence of having the history and spectrum of music available at the end of your fingertips via streaming services.
On the other hand, even though genres have fragmented and spawned a bewildering proliferation of micro-genres (just look at Spotify or read a Pitchfork article for evidence), genre is arguably even more important now than ever. As Sonic Cathedral boss Nathaniel Cramp points out, "[i]n the past, genre was something that was applied to an artist's music by external forces - be that the music press, or whoever - whereas now, you have to choose your genre yourself in order to describe and release music. That is a weird twist." Weird indeed, given the degree to which musicians generally used to protest - and often still do - about being pigeon-holed.
Brooks concludes: "As the lines between traditional music genres have blurred, they no longer define a listener's taste quite like they did pre-streaming era." True enough - but it's clearly also true that genre labels remain useful as forms of shorthand description and marketing tools.
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