Categorisation

[A Lark Ascending]

Now for many a year a standard response to the question 'What sort of music do you play/like?' has been to reject the idea of categories, boxes, bags or whatever you want to call them and declare a love of 'music' without frontiers. I'm all for that.

But it does help to have a few labels so you can find things if you are looking for something in a broad category rather than a specific recording or performer; or so you can store things so you can find them later.

But some of the labelling given to albums via automatic labelling of downloads is bizarre. I just uploaded a CD of English folk music that became 'Country and Western'. Almost random labelling like this seems to be common. I'm forever getting folky things labelled as 'Reggae'. Is everything that is not 'Rock', 'Pop' or 'Urban' (whatever that is) automatically 'Reggae'?

The UK version of iTunes does not recognise 'Folk' - music from that area lands in either 'Singer-Songwriter' (even if it's instrumental and trad. arr !!!) or 'World'. There have been various attempts to relabel 'Folk' over the last 40s years ('Roots' was popular for a while amongst the people who try and steer these things) - but I think that most of us who seek that music continue to use 'Folk' (even though that is a weasel word in itself).

Not something worth losing sleep over, a minor irritation in the grand scheme of things. I just wonder who labels these things. Surely they realise that if they label things appropriately, people seeking a particular style are more likely to find them and they'll sell more.

I can't imagine many reggae fans would be best pleased on playing back that John Kirkpatrick record!

[danasgoodstuff]

Folk = World, Reggae = World, therefore Folk = Reggae, nonsense of course, but I think something like that may be happening. And I quite agree that 'folk' has issues but that there's no better term for much of what goes in that bag, much less all of it (which raises the question of whether it all belongs together).....roots, rock reggae! as they used to say.

My LPs are generally not in categories (except tribute albums), my CDs are, both decesions space driven.

[BeBop]

I don't download, but I do use various metadata services when ripping my CDs. Most of the wacky categorizations I catch, but a few make it to the MP3 player where they can't be changed.

My physical collection (in storage) is categorized as "good music" and "for sale".

[jlhoots]

Folk = World, Reggae = World, therefore Folk = Reggae, nonsense of course, but I think something like that may be happening. And I quite agree that 'folk' has issues but that there's no better term for much of what goes in that bag, much less all of it (which raises the question of whether it all belongs together).....roots, rock reggae! as they used to say.

My LPs are generally not in categories (except tribute albums), my CDs are, both decesions space driven.

What used to be called a false syllogism, i.e true-true & unrelated.