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Microgenre

In the early 1970s, a group of record dealers in the United States began inventing names for obscure vinyl records to make them more valuable to collectors. They called these newly minted categories Northern soul and garage punk, terms that did not exist when the music was originally recorded. These labels were retroactive inventions, applied years after the fact to create a sense of history and scarcity where none had existed. The process was so effective that it turned a few forgotten singles into cultural artifacts worth thousands of dollars. Music journalist Simon Reynolds later described this phenomenon as genre-as-retroactive-fiction, noting that the labels were often pushed by dealers to increase the monetary value of the original records. This practice established a pattern where the definition of a genre could be manufactured by those who controlled the market, rather than emerging organically from the artists themselves. The term microgenre itself appeared in a 1975 French article about historical fiction, defining it as a narrowly defined group of texts connected in time and space, but its true power lay in the music industry's ability to commodify obscurity. By the 1980s, the label freakbeat was coined by Phil Smee, and sunshine pop emerged in the 1990s, continuing the tradition of creating new categories to describe existing sounds. Even Robert Christgau, a prominent music critic, coined the term pigfuck in the early 1980s to describe the music of Sonic Youth, a term that later took on a life of its own to denote a specific style of noise rock music. These early examples proved that a genre could be invented, marketed, and accepted as real, setting the stage for the digital explosion that would follow decades later.

The Blogosphere Explosion

By 2009, the creation of musical microgenres had shifted from the physical record bins of collectors to the digital pages of online blogs. The speed at which these new categories achieved recognition accelerated substantially, driven by software advances, faster internet connections, and the globalized proliferation of music. In that year, a writer for the New York Times observed that indie rock was evolving into an ever-expanding, incomprehensibly cluttered taxonomy of subgenres. The term chillwave was coined by the ironic music blog Hipster Runoff around 2009 as an internet meme, marking one of the first music genres to develop primarily online. The term did not gain mainstream currency until early 2010, when it was the subject of articles by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Journalist Emilie Friedlander later wrote in 2019 that chillwave was the internet electronic micro-genre that launched a hundred internet electronic micro-genres, including vaporwave, witch house, seapunk, and shitgaze. These genres were often described as music scenes created out of thin air, existing as much in the minds of writers and listeners as they did in the recordings themselves. Pitchfork's Jonny Coleman noted that the line between a real genre that sounds fake and a fake genre that could be real was as thin as ever, if it existed at all. This era saw the rise of bloghouse, blog rap, and blog rock, all of which predated the chillwave phenomenon but shared its reliance on online communities to define and spread their existence. The internet allowed for the rapid dissemination of these labels, turning niche interests into global movements in a matter of months.

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MicrogenresMusic journalismMusical subcultures

The Algorithmic Curator

In 2013, Glenn McDonald, who originally worked at the music intelligence firm the Echo Nest, developed genre mapping data that later became built into various Spotify features, including its Daily Mix and Fans also like recommendation functions. He created the Every Noise at Once website, which focused on documenting and categorizing internet-based music microgenres. This work transformed the way music was discovered and consumed, as algorithms began to dictate the boundaries of what constituted a genre. In August 2019, the use of his metadata in the Spotify algorithm contributed to the curation of the influential Hyperpop Spotify playlist, led by Lizzie Szabo. This playlist has been credited with the wider popularization of the movement, as McDonald had previously added the term hyperpop to the platform's algorithm which drew from Every Noise at Once in 2018. The integration of microgenres into streaming algorithms meant that the labels were no longer just descriptive but functional, determining what music listeners heard next. This shift from human curation to algorithmic categorization allowed for the existence of thousands of microgenres, each with its own specific set of rules and aesthetics. The process demonstrated how technology could amplify the fragmentation of music, creating a landscape where a listener could be categorized into a microgenre and then fed more content that reinforced that identity. The result was a self-perpetuating cycle where the existence of a microgenre justified its own creation, and the algorithm ensured its survival.

The Parody of Scenes

In 2010, The Atlantic's Llewellyn Hinkes Johns referenced the succession of chillwave, glo-fi, and hypnagogic pop as a prime example of a cycle involving the invention of a new category that is quickly and brazenly denounced, sometimes in the same article. Grantland's Dave Schilling described the chillwave designation as a pivotal moment that revealed how arbitrary and meaningless labels like that really are. He argued that it was not a scene but a parody of a scene, both a defining moment for the music blogosphere and the last gasp of that era. PopMatters' Thomas Britt argued that the staggering number of niches created by writers and commenters to distinguish musical acts is ultimately binding. If a band plays along and tailors itself to a category, then its fortunes are likely tied to the shelf life of that category. This criticism highlighted the tension between the creative freedom of artists and the restrictive nature of labels. The rapid rise and fall of microgenres often left artists struggling to maintain relevance once the label lost its cultural cachet. The process of defining a genre could become a trap, where the artist's success was measured not by their music but by their adherence to the genre's specific aesthetic. This dynamic created a unique pressure on musicians to conform to the expectations of their microgenre, even if it meant sacrificing their artistic integrity. The cycle of invention and denunciation became a defining characteristic of the microgenre era, where the label was often more important than the music itself.

Beyond the Sound

The spread of digital publishing in the 21st century led to the rise of ever-more niche microgenres in literature, ranging from Amish romance to NASCAR passion. In 2020, Netflix identified 76,897 different microgenres in its algorithms, which it had used to develop successful series like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. This expansion of the concept beyond music demonstrated the versatility of the microgenre framework in categorizing all forms of media. The ability to break down vast libraries of content into thousands of specific categories allowed streaming services to tailor recommendations with unprecedented precision. The same logic that applied to music genres was applied to film, television, and literature, creating a world where every possible combination of themes and styles had its own label. This fragmentation of content meant that audiences could find highly specific content that matched their exact preferences, but it also meant that the broader cultural conversation was often lost in the noise of niche categories. The microgenre concept became a tool for both discovery and isolation, allowing users to dive deep into specific interests while potentially missing the broader context of the media landscape. The success of Netflix's algorithmic approach proved that the microgenre model was not limited to music but was a fundamental aspect of how digital media was consumed and categorized in the modern age.
In the early 1970s, a group of record dealers in the United States began inventing names for obscure vinyl records to make them more valuable to collectors. They called these newly minted categories Northern soul and garage punk, terms that did not exist when the music was originally recorded. These labels were retroactive inventions, applied years after the fact to create a sense of history and scarcity where none had existed. The process was so effective that it turned a few forgotten singles into cultural artifacts worth thousands of dollars. Music journalist Simon Reynolds later described this phenomenon as genre-as-retroactive-fiction, noting that the labels were often pushed by dealers to increase the monetary value of the original records. This practice established a pattern where the definition of a genre could be manufactured by those who controlled the market, rather than emerging organically from the artists themselves. The term microgenre itself appeared in a 1975 French article about historical fiction, defining it as a narrowly defined group of texts connected in time and space, but its true power lay in the music industry's ability to commodify obscurity. By the 1980s, the label freakbeat was coined by Phil Smee, and sunshine pop emerged in the 1990s, continuing the tradition of creating new categories to describe existing sounds. Even Robert Christgau, a prominent music critic, coined the term pigfuck in the early 1980s to describe the music of Sonic Youth, a term that later took on a life of its own to denote a specific style of noise rock music. These early examples proved that a genre could be invented, marketed, and accepted as real, setting the stage for the digital explosion that would follow decades later.

The Blogosphere Explosion

By 2009, the creation of musical microgenres had shifted from the physical record bins of collectors to the digital pages of online blogs. The speed at which these new categories achieved recognition accelerated substantially, driven by software advances, faster internet connections, and the globalized proliferation of music. In that year, a writer for the New York Times observed that indie rock was evolving into an ever-expanding, incomprehensibly cluttered taxonomy of subgenres. The term chillwave was coined by the ironic music blog Hipster Runoff around 2009 as an internet meme, marking one of the first music genres to develop primarily online. The term did not gain mainstream currency until early 2010, when it was the subject of articles by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Journalist Emilie Friedlander later wrote in 2019 that chillwave was the internet electronic micro-genre that launched a hundred internet electronic micro-genres, including vaporwave, witch house, seapunk, and shitgaze. These genres were often described as music scenes created out of thin air, existing as much in the minds of writers and listeners as they did in the recordings themselves. Pitchfork's Jonny Coleman noted that the line between a real genre that sounds fake and a fake genre that could be real was as thin as ever, if it existed at all. This era saw the rise of bloghouse, blog rap, and blog rock, all of which predated the chillwave phenomenon but shared its reliance on online communities to define and spread their existence. The internet allowed for the rapid dissemination of these labels, turning niche interests into global movements in a matter of months.

The Algorithmic Curator

In 2013, Glenn McDonald, who originally worked at the music intelligence firm the Echo Nest, developed genre mapping data that later became built into various Spotify features, including its Daily Mix and Fans also like recommendation functions. He created the Every Noise at Once website, which focused on documenting and categorizing internet-based music microgenres. This work transformed the way music was discovered and consumed, as algorithms began to dictate the boundaries of what constituted a genre. In August 2019, the use of his metadata in the Spotify algorithm contributed to the curation of the influential Hyperpop Spotify playlist, led by Lizzie Szabo. This playlist has been credited with the wider popularization of the movement, as McDonald had previously added the term hyperpop to the platform's algorithm which drew from Every Noise at Once in 2018. The integration of microgenres into streaming algorithms meant that the labels were no longer just descriptive but functional, determining what music listeners heard next. This shift from human curation to algorithmic categorization allowed for the existence of thousands of microgenres, each with its own specific set of rules and aesthetics. The process demonstrated how technology could amplify the fragmentation of music, creating a landscape where a listener could be categorized into a microgenre and then fed more content that reinforced that identity. The result was a self-perpetuating cycle where the existence of a microgenre justified its own creation, and the algorithm ensured its survival.

The Parody of Scenes

In 2010, The Atlantic's Llewellyn Hinkes Johns referenced the succession of chillwave, glo-fi, and hypnagogic pop as a prime example of a cycle involving the invention of a new category that is quickly and brazenly denounced, sometimes in the same article. Grantland's Dave Schilling described the chillwave designation as a pivotal moment that revealed how arbitrary and meaningless labels like that really are. He argued that it was not a scene but a parody of a scene, both a defining moment for the music blogosphere and the last gasp of that era. PopMatters' Thomas Britt argued that the staggering number of niches created by writers and commenters to distinguish musical acts is ultimately binding. If a band plays along and tailors itself to a category, then its fortunes are likely tied to the shelf life of that category. This criticism highlighted the tension between the creative freedom of artists and the restrictive nature of labels. The rapid rise and fall of microgenres often left artists struggling to maintain relevance once the label lost its cultural cachet. The process of defining a genre could become a trap, where the artist's success was measured not by their music but by their adherence to the genre's specific aesthetic. This dynamic created a unique pressure on musicians to conform to the expectations of their microgenre, even if it meant sacrificing their artistic integrity. The cycle of invention and denunciation became a defining characteristic of the microgenre era, where the label was often more important than the music itself.

Beyond the Sound

The spread of digital publishing in the 21st century led to the rise of ever-more niche microgenres in literature, ranging from Amish romance to NASCAR passion. In 2020, Netflix identified 76,897 different microgenres in its algorithms, which it had used to develop successful series like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. This expansion of the concept beyond music demonstrated the versatility of the microgenre framework in categorizing all forms of media. The ability to break down vast libraries of content into thousands of specific categories allowed streaming services to tailor recommendations with unprecedented precision. The same logic that applied to music genres was applied to film, television, and literature, creating a world where every possible combination of themes and styles had its own label. This fragmentation of content meant that audiences could find highly specific content that matched their exact preferences, but it also meant that the broader cultural conversation was often lost in the noise of niche categories. The microgenre concept became a tool for both discovery and isolation, allowing users to dive deep into specific interests while potentially missing the broader context of the media landscape. The success of Netflix's algorithmic approach proved that the microgenre model was not limited to music but was a fundamental aspect of how digital media was consumed and categorized in the modern age.