Técnica e instrumentos de recolección de los datos

The relationship between genres and demographic categories is fundamental to com- mercial music marketing and ‘continued a process of organizing music in terms of categories of difference associated with demographic divisions’ (Brackett, 2016). The relationship between popular music genres and previous notions of genre as, accord- ing to Brackett (2016), ‘it has existed... in musicological study or in the scholarship in other media, such as literature or cinema’ raises some difficulties. For example, in studies of classical music ‘genre has tended to refer to formal and stylistic conven- tions’ (Brackett, 2016). In literature, Aristotle’s formulations accentuated the internal characteristics of poetry (Altman, 1999). In cinema, the ‘formal characteristics and conventions of plot, setting and character’ are often seen as genre-defining (Brackett, 2016). In popular music, the primary concern of is commerce. The music industry uses demographic assumptions to mobilise genre as a means to market to different audiences, as opposed to musicians who may use genre as a means of communica- tion when engaging with other musicians. Critics, according to Brackett (2016), use genre ‘to mediate between producers and consumers.’ Genre is, therefore, not only multidimensional, but is multi-purpose.

Holt (2007) believes that ‘[p]opular music is a powerful cultural and economic force in modern capitalist societies.’ Furthermore, he argues that ‘[genre] is also a tool with which culture industries and national governments regulate the circulation of vast fields of music. It is a major force in canons of educational institutions, cultural hi- erarchies, and decisions about censorship and funding. The apparatus of the corpo- rate music industry is thoroughly organized in generic and market categories.’ Negus (1999) asks: ‘[s]hould judgements about the characteristics of genre be made accord- ing to those sounds heard coming from the music industry and media, or do we need to listen more carefully in the (other) right places?’ He examines the collision be- tween the pragmatic approach to genre taken by music labels, and the tendency for musicians to harbour a ‘desire for free combination and a fluid crossing of bound- aries’. This, he claims, ‘confronts the very way in which some genre practices are con-

strained’. Frith (1996) states that ‘musicians, producers, and consumers are already ensnared in a web of genre expectation’, and Negus (1999) posits that ‘[t]his web is most obviously woven by the spiders of the music industry; any musician will con- front these generic expectations as soon as they are subject to the attentions of music business personnel and, certainly, when within sight of a recording contract.’ He con- tinues, citing Frith (1996): ‘[a]s Frith has also astutely observed, genres are used by record companies as a way of integrating a conception of music (what does it sound like?) with a notion of the market (who will buy it?). Musician and audience are con- sidered simultaneously, as a way of ‘defining music in its market’ and ‘the market in its music.’

Pachet and Cazaly (2000) describe genre as a tool of commerce: ‘[t]he most impor- tant producers of music taxonomies are probably music retailers... Retailers produce taxonomies aimed at guiding consumers in shops, from the main entrance down to the record tracks.’ Beyond the physical shop, they refer to ‘taxonomies... designed by Internet music retailers and consequently made available to the public.’ Commercial factors have historically played an important role in the categorisation of music into genres, and Hull et al. (2011) argue that ‘[t]hroughout the last half of the twentieth century, the music industry saw a proliferation of music genres, as markets became more fragmented’. They describe how Billboard used only three popular music genre categories in 1961, five by 1974, nine in 1982 and, by 1991, were listing 13 musical genre categories. By 2010 the number of genre categories had risen to 27 ‘in addition to the Top 200 and Hot 100’ (ibid.) These figures can be interpreted as being indica- tive of interventions by the music industry as it participated in the fragmentation of audiences.

Especially relevant in recent times, is the proliferation of genres that have occurred since the advent of the Internet. In an online article for The Wall Street Journal, Jur- gensen (2007) writes that ‘[t]he music world is getting thick with hybrids, or cryptically named blends of established styles.’ Giving examples, he continues: ‘Indie Hindi, for example, is traditional Indian vocals tinged with edgy American-style rock. Socaton is dance music that has elements of rap, calypso and reggae.’ Referring to data gleaned from a well established music industry information company, he writes that ‘[t]he number of genres is up more than 40% over the past four years, by one measure - Gracenote, which maintains the music-classification system used by major sites like Yahoo and iTunes, now recognizes more than 1,800 genres.’ Considering how this might work, he notes that ‘ultimately it falls to music-cataloging companies like Gra-

cenote... to decide whether to acknowledge [genres] for posterity.’ According to Jurge- nen, around 40 music analysts (some working in Japan, Russia and other countries), nominate genres. They then make their case by citing important bands and media mentions, and a small group of editors makes the final decision. The integration of a marketing platform with a music delivery system has seemingly resulted in reac- tionary genre creation.

Modern network-delivery systems address the issue of genre by applying a different paradigm to music classification, utilising dynamic, generative systems to create gen- res on day-by-day basis. Data curation is a factor in the way that such systems op- erate. The Echo Nest, the music intelligence service owned by Spotify, allows staff and clients to ‘seed’ new genres into the system (McDonald, 2013). In personal cor- respondence with the author in January 2015, McDonald described the process in more detailed terms: ‘[t]he list of genres comes from pretty much anywhere and ev- erywhere. At this point our data indicates that our coverage is pretty good, at least within our current parameters (genres big enough that there are 100+-ish artists who could be said to produce that kind of music regularly, and at least some of that music is available online), so the pace of additions has slowed considerably.’ McDonald also described how genres are added (and the list is dynamic and changes regularly, of- ten daily): ‘[t]he three main ways more genres get added are: some human identifies a missing term or an unlabelled cluster... We’re always searching and ranking songs and artists for discovery purposes, and sometimes an emerging artist is the tip of an emerging genre. Our automated genre-miner surfaces a whole cluster of data-related music for which we don’t yet have a genre label... the code finds potential clusters, but a human... evaluates them to see if they make subjective listening sense.’ The fact that ‘customers’ can seed and create new genres, and the interventionist, edito- rial strategy employed to find new genres, means that there are human editors looking at this data and making ‘subjective’ decisions - not cultural gatekeepers, but cultural creators, acting from a corporate perspective.