The war against genres is over

I used to hate genre labels.  Privately, I wanted to hatch a master plan to eliminate them completely.  These labels are supposed to divide music into convenient, easily digestible categories, thereby directing the interested listener to what he or she wants to hear, for example, in helping you browse through large inventory in a music store.  However, my chief complaint was that genres actually misdirect people.  Cross pollination across genres had made simple categorization impossible and attempting to shoehorn everyone into a single genre was doing their art a disservice.  Fans had illogical and stupid negative associations with particular genres ("nobody listens to techno!" or  "I like everything except rap and country") that prevented listeners from exploring new types of music. The only solution, I thought, was to alphabetize everything and let the listeners work out what they wanted, free from the genre labels.  This would make the job of journalists and record store employees a bit harder, but would force them to earn their pay by describing the music more colourfully and making informed recommendations by drawing on their (alleged) wealth of experience.  

Twenty years later, and of course the world has changed.  Streaming radio based on algorithms, beginning with Pandora, were able to tailor their broadcasts to the personal taste of the listener.  Genre boundaries came crashing down as the program would collate the music you actually liked and remarkably got better at the task the more you listened.  These days, Google and Youtube recommendations are so advanced, they know my tastes better than I do a lot of the time.  Autoplay meets my approval far more often than not.  As we all know, brick and mortar stores have mostly faded away.  Apps can direct you to great music far better than any craggy record store clerk ever could.

My private war is now moot.  Lately, I enjoy comparing Spotify and Apple Music playlists. Spotify has more tantalizing moods and eclectic playlist ideas than I know what to do with.  A "shoegaze classics" playlist contains many of the usual suspects (but not always their most obvious tracks) but also a broad selection of lesser known bands.  It's a playlist far more steeped in deep cuts and I'm likely to get a few new (new to me) band recommendations each time I listen.  On the other hand, Apple's comparable playlist has a more straightforward selection of bands and songs, and seems to aim at linking fans of different groups rather than curating the best shoegaze songs.  For instance, The Cure's "Plainsong" isn't shoegaze in the least, but I don't know a single fan of the music who doesn't like The Cure, so it's a fair choice.  But Oasis' "Don't Look Back In Anger"?  That's a major algorithm fail.

Neither approach is intrinsically better.  Sometimes you prefer the hits, sometimes the more obscure stuff.  It's all good!   I approve of our computer overlords, etc.