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Taxonomy of Music in the Long Tail Era
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Chris Molla recently wrote a "must-read" blog by those attending the Nightschool for Entrepreneurs . His thoughtful piece about the taxonomy of music [check it out] raises a whole boatload of issues - so much so that I don't know where to dive in.
One area to explore with productive result would be in developing a sound taxonomy in aid "music discovery" in the era of the digital Long Tail in which music has become, by definition, more accessible in variety and quantity such that it is hard for an artist to be found in the noise. Until the growing community of independent artists has access to better discovery devices in the Long Tail [a subject we will discuss later], life as an "indie" artist will be tough.
Taxonomy is, of course, rooted in agreed framing. The problem we often wrestle with in "framing" [a favorite topic at the Nightschool] is the matter of relative perspective. That is, do you frame something according to your view as, say, the initiator of an idea [generator of a signal], or is the framing perspective from the point of view of the listener/receiver trying to discern the signal? What is the common denominator between sender and receiver?
This is, of course, the now pretty throughly examined dichotomy between signal and noise in communications theory - what is signal to some, may be noise to others thus, how does one best sort out the difference?
Chris points out a further complication in his taxonomy blog [and Yan expands upon the point with a good example] that some musicians game the system and self-describe their chosen genre just to stand out from the crowd, while others adhere to traditional classification of genres to describe their body of work. Moreover,listeners [fans on the receiving side of the signal] have their own point of view regarding what they like or don't like and they too create their "personal taxonomies".
Until we can agree on what a common framing perspective should be [if any], finding the "algorithm of music discovery" will be serendipitous [maybe that is the whole point of why music intrigues - because it surprises].
I understand from the fuzz folks that, to move fuzz and our community of artists to the next level in this great adventure, the foregoing non-trivial exercise alluded to above of what is a "good" taxonomy to "optimize" music discovery is one that they are now undertaking to solve with the help of some PhD. whiz-kids in "search and discovery" at MatchMine [ask jeff about this].
By the way, the drill-down flow chart on the Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music that Chris found and linked to in his blog is cool and a good way to approach the taxonomy/framing issue from an historical perspective. We should consider at the Nightschool whether the historical framing approach is a sensible "agreed framing" device.
PS: We have shamelessly hi-jacked Chris' blog so some of our readers at the Nightschool can benefit from it and check out the fantastic pop/Rock chart. Thanks, Chris.
One area to explore with productive result would be in developing a sound taxonomy in aid "music discovery" in the era of the digital Long Tail in which music has become, by definition, more accessible in variety and quantity such that it is hard for an artist to be found in the noise. Until the growing community of independent artists has access to better discovery devices in the Long Tail [a subject we will discuss later], life as an "indie" artist will be tough.
Taxonomy is, of course, rooted in agreed framing. The problem we often wrestle with in "framing" [a favorite topic at the Nightschool] is the matter of relative perspective. That is, do you frame something according to your view as, say, the initiator of an idea [generator of a signal], or is the framing perspective from the point of view of the listener/receiver trying to discern the signal? What is the common denominator between sender and receiver?
This is, of course, the now pretty throughly examined dichotomy between signal and noise in communications theory - what is signal to some, may be noise to others thus, how does one best sort out the difference?
Chris points out a further complication in his taxonomy blog [and Yan expands upon the point with a good example] that some musicians game the system and self-describe their chosen genre just to stand out from the crowd, while others adhere to traditional classification of genres to describe their body of work. Moreover,listeners [fans on the receiving side of the signal] have their own point of view regarding what they like or don't like and they too create their "personal taxonomies".
Until we can agree on what a common framing perspective should be [if any], finding the "algorithm of music discovery" will be serendipitous [maybe that is the whole point of why music intrigues - because it surprises].
I understand from the fuzz folks that, to move fuzz and our community of artists to the next level in this great adventure, the foregoing non-trivial exercise alluded to above of what is a "good" taxonomy to "optimize" music discovery is one that they are now undertaking to solve with the help of some PhD. whiz-kids in "search and discovery" at MatchMine [ask jeff about this].
By the way, the drill-down flow chart on the Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music that Chris found and linked to in his blog is cool and a good way to approach the taxonomy/framing issue from an historical perspective. We should consider at the Nightschool whether the historical framing approach is a sensible "agreed framing" device.
PS: We have shamelessly hi-jacked Chris' blog so some of our readers at the Nightschool can benefit from it and check out the fantastic pop/Rock chart. Thanks, Chris.
Comments
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posted on Jan 16 at 11:06 am
When I think of taxonomies in music, Jack Black's family tree of rock that he drew on the board in "School of Rock" comes to mind. Proper classification of a band is something that will probably never be fully resolved. Why? The simple reason relates to how artists perceive themselves is often radically different than how listeners perceive the artists. This challenge is further compounded due to the fact that many artists are anti-establishment and counter-culture - they don't want to be pigeon holed or "classified" like a lab rat into a genre/scene/whatever that they don't believe in. BUT, music discovery needs some basic hooks at the outset. Companies like Pandora and Soundflavor have taken an approach via "music genome" type projects to classify songs based on numerous parameters - sounds cool, but it's subject to the personal beliefs of the classifiers. On the flip-side, both products are pretty solid and provide good recommendations. We're still trying to figure out the best ways to approach these concepts - even on Fuzz, many of the bands have come up with pretty creative genres that well, make no sense. But it's still cool and it adds to the artistic credibility of the band. Lots of challenges ahead, but it's fun trying to figure it out...
posted on Jan 16 at 5:25 pm
You're entirely welcome. The plan is to get folks thinking and talking. For me, it's important to keep a sense of history, and frankly, I think that's something we should collectively strive for. An understanding of where we come from adds value to our own journey. It also helps us make better decisions and relate to one another more completely. I try to throw ideas out there, and raise the level of the discourse, without being too didactic. It's a fine line and I probably cross it occasionally, but the way I see it, we're participating in the history whether we're aware of it or not. It's much better if we're aware.
posted on Jan 22 at 10:41 am
This is a great topic. If we're circling terms of sort of "de-relativised", nuanced assessment...that is; if we consciously try to perceive that every stimulus we intake and process gets sort of coded at (insert adj. here: varying, fluctuating, inconsistent, relative to observation period) levels of perception. So we try to relate to/with this body of auditory art and differentiate with, again, varying degrees of simultaneity...it really just fits in or mimics/utilises the scheme Google and Wikipedia operate in; multi-level-many faceted accessibility.There seems to be a discernible pattern for commerce, but we're just participating in the flow of time. The first song on my new record addresses that in a hopefully, more accessible, less convoluted manner. That's my tiny contribution to infohistory.