A taxonomy of musical genres

TLDR

Recent advances in electronic music distribution create pressure for fine‑grained metadata to manage large catalogs and enable similarity‑based access. The study aims to develop a global music title metadatabase and a novel music‑genre taxonomy, focusing on a specific descriptor and outlining its construction. The authors analyze inconsistencies in existing genre taxonomies, then design a new taxonomy guided by principles and describe its development process. They present a new music‑genre taxonomy built on guiding principles and detail its construction process.

Abstract

The recent progress of Electronic Music Distribution creates a natural pressure for fine-grained musical metadata. This metadata is needed to provide music distribution services which are able to cope with the mere size of music catalogues, and the desire of users to access music titles by similarity. In this context, we describe a project of a global music title metadatabase, and focus in the particular descriptor. We analyze existing taxonomies of musical genre as found in the music industry and on the Internet, and stress on their inconsistencies. We describe a novel music genre taxonomy based on a few guiding principles, and report on the process of building this taxonomy.