First, what is a music genre?
It’s a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions.
I am not going to pick a side in this article, because ultimately the choice is yours! However, I will give you some reasons why you should pick a genre and some reasons why maybe you should not.
Reasons Why You Should Pick a Genre
1. Picking a genre makes you searchable online.
Isn’t the internet your favorite place to market your music? Well if it is, you will be familiar with keywords. Keywords are everything when it comes to searchability.
If you don’t use one or two basic genre keywords in your description, fewer people will probably stumble across your music in their internet searches. Genre is good for SEO.
When you are using the internet to promote your music, picking a genre for yourself as an artist is sort of like an internet marketer picking a rare niche.
2. Genre is your calling card.
Let’s say you are trying to sell your music to a manager or a promoter.
You are networking and you quickly need to explain what your songs are like. Now, I know there is more to music than simply fitting it into a box, however, as inspirational as they might be, long descriptions do not help you from a sales point of view. Ticking that box will help your business pitch.
Once you capture the industry professional’s attention by fitting into a genre, he will hopefully then realize that there is more to your music than the genre that describes it.
3. Genre gives you an image.
We all know it’s not all about the music; an artist’s image is fairly important. Although you might find what I am going to write next sales-y and superficial, it is extremely relevant.
Now, if you are an easy-listening pop band you would not focus on vinyl sales as much as an indie artist would. Just like, if you are a metal band, you would (probably) not design pink t-shirts as your merchandise. All these examples of image choices listed above are dictated by your initial choice of genre.
Whether you like it or not, picking a genre gives you an image to stick to and this consequently helps the marketing of your music.
Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Pick a Genre
1. Genres are superficial.
You are much more intricate and valuable than the genre you are assigned to. No genre will ever express your full complexity as an artist. Why should an arbitrary word invented by music industry professionals claim to define you?
Take, for instance, the genre of rock. Rock is a very broad term than encompasses many different types of music, some of which are actually pretty divergent from one another. So shouldn’t the music speak for itself?
2. Genre is often not your choice.
Exactly. To refer to the previous paragraph, you are much more than THE GENRE YOU ARE ASSIGNED TO. After all, genres were invented by industry professionals to help music sales. The music business, in general, doesn’t like music that doesn’t fit into pre-defined categories. They don’t know where to put it and customers can’t find it, so nobody buys it.
Don’t you hate this pigeonholing of music? To quote the introduction of this article, a genre is a conventional category.
So why should you follow suit?
3. There are successful examples that prove artists can cross over different genres.
Take The Paper Kites, a band from Melbourne, Australia; their sound was originally loosely based around folk music.
The progression of this sound, along with the band’s many musical inspirations, has pushed them into a range of different genres. When asked about their style of music, Bentley (frontman) has mentioned, “We are whatever we released on the last record”.
If you listen to their album twelvefour, you will hear electric guitars and a drum kit.
Their latest release instead is acoustic guitar based, with quiet and mellow ballads and tunes, completely drum-kit- less.
So what do you think
Should you pick a genre? Does being genre-less make your music unsellable? Is there a way to make a living from your music without bending to the industry rules? How can you preserve your creativity without being put into a box? Does fitting into a genre mean fitting into a box anyway? Isn’t a genre just a starting point? Isn’t a genre just a springboard, a vehicle to travel even further? And who says you can never switch (or meld or expand) genres just like The Paper Kites did?
Like I wrote at the beginning of the article, the choice is ultimately yours! Let a genre define you, or let it inspire you!
