This site and the spotify playlists that it makes, has rekindled my interest in music after being dormant for more than a decade. Never expected that computer generated playlists could be good. Highly recommended.
I’ve been a huge fan of this project for a while and have some tips:
- The Spotify playlists all update automatically (usually weekly) so it’s worth following genres you like.
- Don’t miss the Pulse and Edge playlists linked at the top of most genre pages! Both are based on the listening activity of fans of the genre, with Pulse focusing on currently popular music and Edge on lesser-known artists.
- Smarter Playlists (http://smarterplaylists.playlistmachinery.com/) is a visual environment for building programmatic playlists using Spotify API calls. I use the Pulse and Edge playlists to make my own “Release Radar”-style playlists focused on specific genres, sorted to show the newest and least popular music first.
I’ve also been tinkering on a little handheld ESP32 Spotify remote that includes the genre and country playlists from here. It’s handy to use with a smart speaker to browse music when you don’t know what you want to hear.
What new music did you discover and listen to?
I listened to a lot of classical music, rock, pop in my youth, then came electronic music and raves. After some relatively music-less years (how come?), few years ago, I came back to electronic music and it blew my mind - psytrance, dark psytrance, goatrance, hi-tech, forest psy to name a few more brain damaging and fun. :)
Also... on the other end of the spectrum, there is Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast [0] with Ambience for the Masses [1] catalogue of ambient music.
And... yes... Mixing of Particulate Solids radio (mops-radio.org - not in operation) will be missed with sorrow. It was a radio from two guys from Bratislava/Slovakia with three streams with only few slots... exceptional. Only recently they stopped streaming completely...
>"Every Noise at Once is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 5,304 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify as of 2021-03-30."
This site was such an eye opener for me when I found it a couple years ago. I had always wondered about this weird genre of electronic music I liked to listen to when working and create in my spare time, and it turns out to be called "Wave".
Glad to see someone mentioning Wave! I have had a Wave playlist created for a while now without knowing it was even a genre. Then, I googled one of the songs and found out that Øfdream died, and discovered the references to the genre name during that research. Feels bad.
I used to watch livestreams of Øfdream making his music. Me and my friends felt close to him at the time because there wasn't a lot of viewers and we could easily talk. Feels bad indeed.
There's a great article about this very project called 'What Is “Escape Room” And Why Is It One Of My Top Genres On Spotify?'[0]
Long story short, the creator had to assign names to some of the clusters the algo spat out, Escape Room being one. Another example might include a cluster called Ninja, aptly named as it's _mostly_ made of artists from the Ninjatune label. Fascinating stuff.
For years now this site has been a secret weapon for discovering music and artists hitherto unknown. Classical is often the most surprising. The scan time is too short, as mentioned, so I add new background tabs when I hear a snippet of interest for further investigation. Doing this is an exercise of the mental & physical, and time well spent. How artists and tracks are tagged is not always consistent, but the sheer number of options usually delivers.
There's a blurb of text at the very bottom that explains what it is (I just found it, it wasn't obvious to me either):
> Every Noise at Once is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 5,304 genre-shaped distinctions by Spotify as of 2021-03-30. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.
> Click anything to hear an example of what it sounds like.
> Click the » on a genre to see a map of its artists.
> Be calmly aware that this may periodically expand, contract or combust.
EDIT: Artist map is even more interesting, see e.g.: https://everynoise.com/engenremap-russianchoir.html - it has a scatterplot of artists, genre's neighbourhood, and... I'm not sure what that dark one is. I'm guessing the neighbourhood opposite in the "genre space"?
> I assumed by the name it would play a bunch of sounds over each other.
Same here. It is impressive for what it is, but I was wondering whether I was missing the functionality to overlay or somehow sync up different genres simultaneously while exploring it.
This is fantastic fun. But a few things that could make it better in my opinion:
1. I think the short description of what this is, but more importantly how to use it, should be at the top. Sometimes discovering how something works is fun, but I found it annoying in this case - discovering the music is the fun bit.
2. I hate that it scrolls what I've clicked to the vertical centre of the screen. It means I can't click around an area without it constantly changing the scroll position and me having to readjust because what I was going to click on next has moved.
3. I think this could be annoying if on by default, but I'd like the back button to take me back to what I'd played before. Perhaps this could be behind an option, off by default, otherwise people might unexpectedly get caught in one of those long back-back-back browser history states.
4. When a sample is playing, clicking on white space should stop what's playing, as should pressing the escape key.
Also, something not in the instructions is that if you're playing a sample you can hover over the >> icon to see what's actually playing.
This is a fun tool, but it's also pretty revealing of the arbitrariness with which "genre" is labeled. Though I get that there is frequent innovation in electronic music, I would argue the same is true of all music, yet electronic music is the most likely to see that innovation as a "new genre."
Searching this page for "jazz" I find results that don't really capture the space, and instead go deep into interesting but likely unrepresentative niches ("icelandic jazz") that musicologists probably wouldn't consider genres/subgenres. There's also things that clearly aren't genres but are just keywords people like using ("jazz organ", "jazz clarinet").
Overall, again this is a fun music discovery tool, but if you want to learn about music genres I'd suggest reading about music history. This doesn't just mean old/classical music (though it is influential), there's lots of fascinating books about modern music as well.
Recently updated, it's a comprehensive history and map of electronic music. It's been around since 2000, played a big role in my life. Highly recommended.
It's interesting that the newest genre on there is trap from 2010. I'm trying to think of newer styles, the only one I can come up with is the so-called "hyperpop" by PC Music, Sophie and 100 gecs. But that's been around since 2012 or so. I'm guessing it's a combination of factors:
1) Playlist culture negates the need for a clear taxonomy of music
2) It takes a few years of hindsight to recognize what is a real genre and not just marketing/hype
3) Electronic music is "done": most interesting permutations of notes, rhythms and timbres have been tried already
Future bass (Illenium, Mura Masa), bass house (Habstrakt, Jauz, Matroda), g-house isn't new, but it recently became popular (Malaa, Bijou, Dr. Fresch), future house (Oliver Heldens, Martin Solveig, Don Diablo, Zonderling). Also I could swear Chris Lorenzo's and Chris Lake's songs in recent couple of years (especially under the Anti Up pseudonym) are forming their own thing.
> Playlist culture negates the need for a clear taxonomy of music
Very true. Playlist culture has the potential to organise and label sound aesthetics in ways that genres do not do justice. My playlists are labelled similarly like "Silk" (mostly smooth and deep house with elements of other electronic genres that fit the aesthetic). Silk is obviously not a genre but it's a valid taxonomy to me.
> It takes a few years of hindsight to recognize what is a real genre and not just marketing/hype
I think this has greatly shortened in recent years. I think new genres can be clearly defined on timescales of months or less although it's hard to verify the "legitimacy" of a new genre.
> Electronic music is "done"
There are lots of traditional folk genres and acoustic styles that don't have a clear synergy with electronic genres yet, I'm sure more will surface.
It's not up to date by any measure. There are new electronic genres popping up yearly, and usually it's the opposite of what you describe. Usually one artist does something new, quickly gets labeled and then the copycats start up. It's almost a branding exercise. Genres come and go as you say, and technically most genres are "hype" as they tend to last only briefly. There's nothing unique or new about that.
I don't understand point 3 and how that relates to electronic music specifically. There's a technically-infinite but practically-shallow set of pop music configurations and, yes, most have been done. What differentiates similar songs is composition, timbre, tempo, instrumentation choice, etc. In that regard electronic music has a wider palette to work with.
It's akin to sorting an incoming set of something like Lego, where you never know what's coming next.
Do you need a bin for "red"? Or a bin for "2x4"? Or will there be enough for "2x4 red"?
Should this new "red hat" become it's own bin, and if so is it "hats", "red figure decorations" or "misc"?
You don't really know until a bunch of the same things come in (or don't), and guaranteed you'll get a bunch wrong along the way.
Of course any style of music can get old and repetitive. But electronic music in particular has been very tied to the technological development of electronic instruments, from the moog modular and forward. A style like jungle/dnb was simply not possible before the advent of samplers and sequencers (well in theory you could do it with tape machines, but). Since about 2005 we can do "just about anything" with DAWs and plugins.
With the development of additive synthesis techniques, technically any form of audio/sound is possible. However, replicating a single acoustic (or "organic") sound - much less an entire composition - through this technique would be strenuous and prohibitively labor intensive. Analogously, it would be like rendering a new banana by arranging some atoms.
Although we can technically "do anything" with the tools before us, there are still great strides to be made in harnessing the power to organize and control them. For this reason, I think we're still far from seeing the full potential of electronic music. We need better tools, and methods for manipulation of electronic instruments. We can barely even replicate and sequence the timbral control of something as seemingly simple as singing.
Anyone who thinks that electronic music is “done” should listen to Iglooghost. Most fresh and unique music I’ve heard in a long time. It sounds like it was made by aliens (while still beinhg quite catchy and listenable, IMO).
The hyperactive, glossy aesthetic is definitely similar, although I'd place Iglooghost closer to hip-hop/grime (e.g. "White Gum"). Sophie sounds more like a mutated version of chart pop music.
> 3) Electronic music is "done": most interesting permutations of notes, rhythms and timbres have been tried already
Have you heard last week's release 'Promises' by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the LSO? I haven't heard anything like it before (although that might be me), and it completely blew me away.
My guess is that genres have become kinda diluted, because they've been sliced hyperfine. Wouldn't you rather be "the preeminent producer of Shoe-Slap HyperPunk Shibuya-by-way-of-Baghdad Grunge Disco!" than "A decent enough Techno composer"?
You show me a playlist of "techno" I've never seen before, I have a general idea what I'm in for. You tell me about "future bass", I have no clue.
Some of these genres seem more like they're really about some specific artist rather than a "genre", that is, the "genre" means something more like "I'm inspired by this artist or small number of artists" more than anything that ought to be called a "genre", if genre is to have any meaning.
... and as evidence... consult your own emotional reaction. Does it feel like I just "attacked" your favorite genre? That's actually my point; "genre" somehow carries cache with it that "being inspired by" doesn't. So of course there's a rush to declare new genres at a breakneck speed.
I can't see how you'd think niche subgenres are replaceable by "influencing artists", for even very niche subgenres don't tend to gravitate around a single artist as you imply. Niche, and at first glance similar stuff like future bass, future funk and kawaii future bass are still easy to tell apart and have many artists producing original sounds that people still associate to the genre.
I don't understand your point in the end either, but it feels like you're trying to project anger onto other people. Do you feel angry that electronic music genres are not as easy to understand as you hoped and are trying to rationalize this as people coming up with random genres for publicity? Try to think of clear, obvious examples that should validate your rationalization, if it is more than just that then you'll easily be able to come up with a few without reaching for a search engine.
I guess if I had to summarize my point, you get more of what you reward. If you reward people for identifying themselves as super-niche genres with acclamation, you're going to get an absurdly-finely-sliced set of genres. It doesn't mean those hyper-fine genres are necessarily all that useful.
If anything, I kinda think it hurts artists to be slicing this finely. You can't really just be ambiently "creative" without having some sort of constraint and structure around you, but jumping into a really small box isn't necessarily a great plan either.
That's a big lol at any form of music being "done". How and when would you judge something as broad as a musical style to be "done"?
In your opinion, if most of the "interesting permutations have been tried" what innovations would it take for a new genre/style to develop and broaden the scope of what can be expressed?
Seconded! I particularly recommend reading through some of the genre descriptions (click the (i) icon after selecting a song). They're all beautifully written and many are delightfully opinionated.
I love when I encounter these sites and learn a name for some subgenre or quality of music that I enjoy. I've never really cared to really get into discovering and/or researching songs I like, I just accrete them over time as I hear something that speaks to me.
Apparently quite a lot of artists I like fall under "Big Beat".
This has been a great site for exploring various microgenres.
I forget which service offers this -- is it Pandora? Sometimes I have some pretty hyper-specific requests that I have a hard time describing, and most of the "if you liked X you will probably like Y" are entirely too clunky for it.
@hwayne I've already discovered some really cool genres I like from this.
since its algorithmic and the data is structured in a somewhat ordinal manner, does this man you could perform a @D binary search with a rating for every "visit" and be able to pinpoint areas of generes that you like?
I'd like to build this if it would help me discover more things in a systematic way.
Does anyone know how Spotify assigns the genre tags to artists? Looking up myself on this site shows me as under two main tags: "Folk Rock Italiano" and "SLC Indie" (which is apparently Salt Lake City).
Although folk rock and indie are accurate, I'm neither Italian nor American.
For various reasons they are secretive about this, but the genre system is inherited from EchoNest which they acquired in 2014. EchoNest's main idea was to combine audio analysis with natural language processing and web scraping to categorize music. In fact the two founders were PhD's in each respective field.
But nowadays I'm guessing they are utilizing their huge dataset of playlists to group artists under tags. Obviously such systems will work better the more popular an artist is.
They are not that secretive, it's been written about several times. Long story short: a lot of it is still Glenn McDonald, the person behind everynoise, that was acquihired when they bought echonest.
Well, ideally your spotify artist page should contain the genres you're tagged with, along with some info of how that came to be, and even a way to request a change to those. But they don't want people to game the system, and also not let competitors know how they do things (I'm guessing).
I wonder / kinda hope that they have a bunch of music experts working for them that manually categorize and tag music, at least to kickstart their algorithms.
I am deaf. How to proceed from a soundbite to songs or even an album? No Spotify and other subscriptions available. It's for my 8 year old son who likes to listen to music.
I was disappointed at most of the sludge genres not sounding much like sludge (dark sludge sounding closest to something I might hear in the genre but still not quite). Actually my username here is a sludge song :), albeit from an album with other influences.
If this data is form Spotify which seems to be the case, I’ve noticed genre classification isn’t always perfect though.
I love this site, but it would take 5 lines of CSS to make it more usable. Why would you ever hardcode a 540px margin and padding on divs that have no class or id? Here's one line to help anyone out to remove horizontal scrollbars to completely blank spaces:
I misread the url and thought this was gonna be an April Fool's joke from mynoise.net where it has a new noise generator that plays every sound at once.
Because I consider myself not to have enough time to truly explore music, I'm disappointed that Spotify (same data as this) does not make it easier to discover music that's similar to my music, but different. No matter how I use its "radio" feature it's very rare that I find a truly unique branch to explore that doesn't just lead back to the same artists, or at least to the same sub-genre.
Unfortunately I don't see the common theme in music I like represented in the two dimensions chosen for this representation, so it doesn't help terribly much. Given I like (per this data) "Celtic" and "neo-mellow", it turns out "japanese guitar" and "pop rock" aren't actually the correct next steps for me...
Start with an obscure artist: various sites will then recommend "Radiohead". Yeah, I think I heard of them.
How about recommending other obscure stuff rather than funneling everything into mainstream?
I feel like they find other users that like the same artist, then look for other artists these users also like ... it ferrets out the lowest common denominator.
I strongly want to know what someone that would have experienced almost exhaustively all of the music universe, would qualify as the best songs (the criterion being potency on qualias).
The closest I could find are the lists of Scaruffi which is a man that has for his life full time job since decades the goal of refining its list.
https://www.scaruffi.com/ratings/10.html
While there are some gems I feel like the results would be very different had they been generated contemporaneously by someone with a younger brain, for example I am in much bigger intersection with lukeprog or David Dean Burkhart.
There are websites like rateyourmusic.com but I still can't find a platform of recommendations made by passionated experts.
