Steve Oldmeadow (soldmeadow@bigpond.com)
Fri, 21 Jan 2000 09:57:12 +1100
----- Original Message -----
From: Dirk van den Heuvel <dirkv@groovedis.com>
To: Gordon <ghurd@yahoo-inc.com>; <acid-jazz@ucsd.edu>
Sent: 21/01/2000 08:28
Subject: RE: More House not House questions?
> Trust me more than the music press would go out of business without labels
> for different kinds of music. It's next to impossible to sell new bands
and
> labels WITHOUT labelling them. It is essential to selling, buying, and
> stocking of records. Musicians don't like labels describing their music
> ("we're unique--you can't label us!), but record labels, distributors, and
> stores rely on them. Sorry.
>
The question is how fine do these labels need to be? Dance music seems to
be obsessed with micro genres. Classifying things only works if the
categories are well understood by the people you intend communicating with.
Unfortunately over time even labels that were well understood lose meaning
through misuse. I have no idea what people mean now when they talk about
techno, electro or dub even though I am very familiar with the origins of
these genres.
I think you can sell just as much music by referencing it to existing music
people may already know. This approach seems to work for stores like Amazon
and CD Now.
Steve
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