A polyphony of characteristics: An analysis of the categorisation of music’s subgenres

Abstract

We examine how music subgenres are differentiated from each other within seven parent genres – classical, folk, reggae, country, blues, electronic and jazz – according to two different sources, AllMusic and the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms. Medium was by far the most common differentiator, but there were many others, with most subgenres defined according to multiple characteristic types, the use of which varied greatly across genres. Overall, differentiation was based more on characteristics intrinsic to the music, but prominent extrinsic characteristic types included culture and period. Also prominent was the identification of characteristics associated with other subgenres and genres, representing hybridisation. The resulting codebook of characteristics only partly overlaps with the major facets of music identified in the knowledge organisation literature. Our research conceptualises the musical subgenre, suggesting that music subgenres are differentiated from and connected to other subgenres, and to higher-level genres, in complex, familial ways – horizontally, vertically and obliquely.