Genre Obsession!

I would rather see everybody given the chance to tag albums than leaving it up to teams -- teams would still decide on category for the band/artist.  It may not be that reliable, and there may be abuse, and we'd have to have a warning and disclaimer, but I think it would be a bonus feature for users.  As more people tagged an album the tagging would become more reliable (perhaps collab taggings could be given greater weight, and we'd have more collabs who would be enlisted for the it tagging work, if we only allow a few tags per album, which would push the bad ones off the tag list for each album over time -- maybe weighted taggings that uses an algorithm that takes into account the number of times a tag has been given to an album for greater reliability).  I would hope that people would take the time to multi-tag when reviewing/ rating an album.

We'd have to decide which tags to use.  I wouldn't stick with just the names of our categories for tags -- pop, disco, funk, classical,  folk (using the term loosely) would be some obvious tags to have.

I would so love to be able to easily search this site for albums that cross particular styles.  I haven't used this site for research for years.  If I want, say, a psych jazz funk rock album from 1970, I google.  I don't find PA as a good a research tool as I would hope for an an archive which has has had so very much work put into it by so many volunteers.


Edited by Logan - January 05 2012 at 13:17

Gerinski wrote: There's only obsession if you want it to be. To me, genre tags are just a helpful but never definitive indication.   Certainly it would be nice to have per-album tags (I myself proposed for it in my first months of PA membership) but so far I have had no serious problem with PA not having them. Band tag + some looking at the album reviews gives you a fair enough image of what you can expect from each album.   Certainly for seach purposes this is far from ideal and I would still support additional per-album tags (no need to change anything of the current tags, just additional tags to be gradually added) but the current situation is not that bad either.

Categorizing bands is way easier than classifying a band's works.In this situation it's even harder to have a same opinion on an album.

Edited by progprogprog - January 05 2012 at 18:37

progprogprog wrote: Categorizing bands is way easier than classifying a band's works.In this situation it's even harder to have a same opinion on an album. Lately I started Categorizing my albums in my player, which I label them into: "masterpieces" "Worth listening" "No Idea Yet" "Weirds"  "Ready To Delete"(This one is for times with low space cases) Any idea?

Right, genres are there because 'you' - as in a figurative you - wanted them.  All fine and dandy to say they shouldn't exist, but they do.  What I do have some reservations about is evaluating first whether a band fits into a certain prog sub genre...viz crossover or neo prog, etc.   What then happens is if it doesn't fit squarely in that sub genre, it gets tossed around teams.  The first question ought to be whether it is prog, because we have seen that that itself is a question mark often times and not so easy to get a fix on.  If the collabs agree it is prog, then the question of where it best fits should be taken up.  But just because a band that is prog for all practical purposes doesn't fit squarely into one or two suggested sub-gs doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't belong on PA. 


Edited by rogerthat - January 05 2012 at 22:36

rogerthat wrote: Right, genres are there because 'you' - as in a figurative you - wanted them.  All fine and dandy to say they shouldn't exist, but they do.  What I do have some reservations about is evaluating first whether a band fits into a certain prog sub genre...viz crossover or neo prog, etc.   What then happens is if it doesn't fit squarely in that sub genre, it gets tossed around teams.  The first question ought to be whether it is prog, because we have seen that that itself is a question mark often times and not so easy to get a fix on.  If the collabs agree it is prog, then the question of where it best fits should be taken up.  But just because a band that is prog for all practical purposes doesn't fit squarely into one or two suggested sub-gs doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't belong on PA.

rogerthat wrote: Right, genres are there because 'you' - as in a figurative you - wanted them.  All fine and dandy to say they shouldn't exist, but they do.  What I do have some reservations about is evaluating first whether a band fits into a certain prog sub genre...viz crossover or neo prog, etc.   What then happens is if it doesn't fit squarely in that sub genre, it gets tossed around teams.  The first question ought to be whether it is prog, because we have seen that that itself is a question mark often times and not so easy to get a fix on.  If the collabs agree it is prog, then the question of where it best fits should be taken up.  But just because a band that is prog for all practical purposes doesn't fit squarely into one or two suggested sub-gs doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't belong on PA.

Edited by progprogprog - January 06 2012 at 04:40

 - Somebody to comes to the forum to complain about the focus and increasing fanaticism over genres, subgenres, and subsubgenres on Prog Archives.

 - Somebody suggests  tagging albums, or even individual songs with their own subsubsubgenres, to reflect the eclectic nature of some artists and be more accurate. This makes the genre obsession even bigger, and ridiculously more complicated.

 - Everybody on the forum agrees.

thehallway wrote:  - Somebody to comes to the forum to complain about the focus and increasing fanaticism over genres, subgenres, and subsubgenres on Prog Archives.  - Somebody suggests  tagging albums, or even individual songs with their own subsubsubgenres, to reflect the eclectic nature of some artists and be more accurate. This makes the genre obsession even bigger, and ridiculously more complicated.  - Everybody on the forum agrees.

Edited by progprogprog - January 06 2012 at 10:06

maybe because it's hard not to complicate things 

Edited by progprogprog - January 06 2012 at 12:36