“Music is moving away from genres” says Spotify CEO

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lucidae, May 21, 2015.

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  1. Lucidae

    Lucidae AAD Thread Starter

    Location:
    Australia
    Quote from an article...

    Today in New York, Spotify announced a number of new features to add to its music streaming service, including the ability to stream video clips and podcasts as well as a move away from searching for music within genres to searching for playlists based on situations and previous preferences.

    Spotify noted that users have listened to more than 25 billion hours of music on its service. That translates into a lot of data about individual customers, and the company is hoping to leverage that information to serve up smarter playlists based on the date and time (is it Monday morning? Wednesday after lunch? Friday night? All these moments require different kinds of music) as well as the kinds of music that the customer has listened to in the past. “Music is moving away from genres,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told an audience today. “People don’t search for Hip Hop or Country anymore, but rather they search around activities or a particular experience.” In Spotify's new iteration, the option to pick one of these playlists will be found on the start page, and as with other music streaming services, as you keep listening, the playlists will get smarter.


    (source)
     
    norman_frappe likes this.
  2. Adam9

    Adam9 Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    I don't use Spotify, but anything that moves music away from genres is good news to me. I don't like music being labelled.
     
    englishbob, WolfSpear, FJFP and 14 others like this.
  3. TokenGesture

    TokenGesture Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    It's still being labelled - but now its as "running music", "music to cook to", "music to have a **** to" etc
    Not a big fan of this, but then I'm not the target market
     
  4. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    It's still genres. But I agree that music works in moody ways and often that is time of day or night. I was explaining this to a friend. Stand by Sly and the Family Stone does not work well at 7:00am like it does much much later in the day or night time. It's not about genre so much as the playing style, speed, or volume.
     
    enro99, L.P., hi_watt and 4 others like this.
  5. PHILLYQ

    PHILLYQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn NY
    there seems to be more and more of genre-busting music that crosses styles, etc. A lot of young folks are not hard and fast as far as categories go as their parents were.
     
    mschrist, kannibal, ARK and 2 others like this.
  6. FlatulentDonkey

    FlatulentDonkey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northern Ireland
    I've never really paid much attention to genres but then I listen to a lot of music that spans several genres and cannot be easily pigeon holed.

    First thing I do when I buy music these days is clear the Genre tag.
     
    Stone Turntable likes this.
  7. Paully

    Paully De gustibus non est disputandum

    Location:
    Tennessee
    That is just a 90's cliche that business people were throwing around that represented the new service economy versus the old manufacturing economy. It was no longer about providing a quality product or service but catering to the idea of providing a full customer "experience". Whatever. The human mind is wired to categorize, its what we do and have done for a few hundred thousand years, at least. The desire to get more money out of your customer by providing them with a full, immersive "experience" doesn't change that.
     
  8. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    If that means it's 1963 again, I'm all for it.
     
    vmajewsk, mschrist and John B Good like this.
  9. Smiths22

    Smiths22 Well-Known Member

    Metallica is trash, heavy metal or rock?
     
    CirculationUnderflow likes this.
  10. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    You are right but that doesn't mean that listener categories are identical with record biz categories. I assume they are just doing this in brute force fashion. Like Amazon they remember everything you buy/stream and when you did it. So if you are streaming hip hop in the morning they look to see what other people who also stream hip hop in the morning are doing. If they listen to something in the morning not categorized as hip hop - voila a new recommendation pops up on your mobile device.
     
    Paully likes this.
  11. PHILLYQ

    PHILLYQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn NY
    True, we do categorize as a matter of habit, but there's plenty of music that's square peg/round hole.
     
    ARK and Paully like this.
  12. FlatulentDonkey

    FlatulentDonkey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northern Ireland
    I'd say trash. I've always seen them as overrated :goodie: :edthumbs:
     
    Kiss73, jfbar167, Northwind and 11 others like this.
  13. Ash76

    Ash76 Wait actually yeah no

    To me it seems if they are trying to categorise the music based on what activities you are umdertaking while listening, they may as well just call it background music and be done with it!
     
    sami, zphage, highway chile and 15 others like this.
  14. wavethatflag

    wavethatflag God is love, but get it in writing.

    Location:
    SF Bay Area
    Music is moving away from genres? Really? And I suppose ice cream is moving away from flavors.
     
  15. Nostaljack

    Nostaljack Resident R&B enthusiast

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    ...and hopefully Spotify is moving away from relevance. Worst thing that ever happened to music.

    Ed
     
  16. nbakid2000

    nbakid2000 On Indie's Cutting Edge

    Location:
    Springfield, MO
    Not in my world, it isn't.

    This is basically casual music fans not caring what they listen to. It's aural wallpaper. Not that there's anything wrong with that but I don't operate that way.
     
  17. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I have not doubt that this is true. You need look no further than the nearest Festival, where kids might be enjoying Muse on one night and Adele the next. Young people are much more open to different genres or eras. Today, the thought of Rolling Stones fans booing Prince off the stage seems insane.
     
    ajsmith and Robert C like this.
  18. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I think people are misunderstanding the statement. It's not that musical genres are disappearing. It's that increasingly, listeners prefer NOT to limit the music they are exposed to by genre. Unlike being limited to the playlist on "your classic rock station for Southern California", or "98.7 the home of hip hop" or whatever. It's in essence about access and exposure to different genres.
     
    Robert C likes this.
  19. rene smalldridge

    rene smalldridge Senior Member

    Location:
    manhattan,kansas
    Yep. There will be week night bowel movement music , late night porno website surfing music , early morning fighting with your spouse or significant other music , bill paying music , picking lint out of your navel music , changing the cat litter box music.......all to provide you with the full ambient experience lifestyle.
     
  20. Rodney Toady

    Rodney Toady Waste of cyberspace

    Location:
    Finland
    Soon this "away from genres" music will be a genre in its own right... outie, perhaps (as in "outside of genres").
     
  21. tremspeed

    tremspeed Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I can't think of anything more limiting than letting an algorithm just decide what music I'm going to hear... but as someone else said, I'm (definitely) not the target market.
     
  22. gocartmozart

    gocartmozart Member

    Location:
    Germany
    When I'm in the mood for discovering new music I check out my "Discover Weekly" playlist and more often than not I find something I really like and haven't heard before. Nothing limiting about this.
     
  23. gocartmozart

    gocartmozart Member

    Location:
    Germany
    Even Spotify Is Surprised by the Huge Success of Its Discover Weekly Playlists »

    Found this an interesting read, but I marveled at this paragraph:

    really??
     
  24. the sands

    the sands Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oslo, Norway
    If so, I think it's a bad thing. It makes it ever more difficult for artists with a colorful or individual imagination to make music out on the edges. Everything comes down to a middle of the road pop song.
     
    vmajewsk likes this.
  25. I don't think that musical artists should stick to genres if they don't want to and I think much of the most interesting music is hard to classify. Still when searching for music it's useful to know whether a band is considered, bluegrass, death metal or possibly bluegrass/death metal crossover.
     
    DiabloG and longaway like this.
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