BROADCASTS.com

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON\n\nWATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE\n\nRock. Pop. Funk. Soul. Electronic. What do these words have in common? AT LEAST two things: 1. They\u2019re all so-called \u201cgenres\u201d of popular music; and B. They\u2019re all included on the two albums in this podcast. Why does that matter?\xa0\n\nCompilations like these matter more than ever. The music industry learns as it grows. It tries things, and the things that work it doubles down on, then quadruples down on, until they don\u2019t work anymore. So it tries other things and so on and so on. One thing it tried that worked \u2013 and by \u201cworked\u201d I mean for promotion, sales & programming \u2013 was to create the idea of genres. To target market to people who they assume like a certain kind of music more than other kinds. And fuck if it didn\u2019t work like a charm every step of the way. So the industry kept creating more genres, kept subdividing existing genres, kept narrowing the targets for each one.\n\nThe many successes of that strategy are hard to dispute, but I\u2019m gonna do it. Here\u2019s one negative effect the industry doesn\u2019t care about: the extreme factionalization of music in all forms of media, which segregates fans and squashes the communal experience of music. Blah blah blah \u2013 we might care about that, but that doesn\u2019t sound like a business or money issue, right?\n\nWRONG. And this is why the industry SHOULD care about it. The over-targeting of demographics and the over-reliance on genres and categories and labels in general, have so excluded huge numbers of potential fans that every facet of the music industry is LOSING MONEY. It\u2019s leaving money on the table by alienating fans who don\u2019t \u201cbelong\u201d in a demographic it has over-defined as more inclined to be into a certain genre. So this isn\u2019t just about lovey-dovey come together-ness. \xa0It\u2019s about COLD HARD CASH. And that\u2019s the way to convince ANY INDUSTRY that discrimination and not caring about some people and the communal experience in general is a bad thing. It hurts the bottom line.\n\nAaaaaand why did I go into this rant for this episode? Because K-Tel\u2019s annual hits collections were the exact opposite of this. They were cashing in, sure thing. But more than that, deliberately or not, they were acknowledging that it\u2019s possible and even LIKELY that ONE music fan might actually be into MANY kinds of music. It\u2019s something the industry has majorly dropped the ball on, and has been suffering for years now because of it. It\u2019s something the internet as a business extension is also REALLY FUCKING HORRIBLE at \u2013 I mean algorithms now do extreme factional targeting that the pre-internet industry could only dream of.\n\nBut it\u2019s also something that the CITIZENS of the internet do very well. Some do. And in fact I\u2019d say more do than don\u2019t. More music fans are seeking out more kinds of music than the percentage of fans who only stick to their assigned demographic genres. More musicians are denouncing genres as creative AND business prisons. So give some love to these two amazing hits collections from 1982 & 1983. Albums like this are the grandparents of diversity and connection.\n\nALL of my band REC\u2019s releases this year \u2013 four EPs and one album \u2013 were birthed from my MUSIC is not a GENRE project. It\u2019s my way of shattering artistic, commercial and social boundaries. Go listen to what I\u2019ve released so far, here on REC\u2019s YouTube page, and you\u2019ll hear what I mean:\n\nREC on YouTube\n\nWhat types of music do you like that you\u2019re \u201cnot supposed to\u201d? Do you remember K-Tel?? Discuss dammit!\n\n\n--- \n\nThis episode is sponsored by \n\xb7 Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app\n\nSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/musicisnotagenre/support\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices