What are the dividing, or rathe DIFINING lines?

[J. Golden]

As I am ripping my collection to Itunes I'm getting extremely frustrated with the automatic categories that says thrash bands are dance music, folk groups are hip-hop, etc. As I'm going through changing these things I started thinking about what defines the labels we put on bands particularly rock bands. Separating metal bands is a cake walk compared to rock bands. Now sure some are easy considering certain factors like geography; from South of the Mason Dixon, band is easily put under "Southern Rock" - with the exception of The Band of course
Now the question I am pondering rightnow is what exactly seperates the melodic rock, hard rock, and AOR bands? Now if it is just so wimpy that it makes Richard Marx seem like Conan then obviously AOR, still some melodic rock bands that are at times referred to as "metal" have been called AOR. I just think the line needs to be drawn somewhere.

 

[J. Golden]

Ok #1; hard rock band with keyboard is closer to AOR than hard rock band without keyboard.
Also think if hard rock band is from Canada there is a good chance it is AOR.

 

[TribunalRecords]

From my experience in setting up my releases for digital service iTunes only has so many "genres" it recognizes. For instance "AOR" isn't one of them. Apple is in control of the future of music, haven't you heard? Dictatorships are fun.

Also I am only speaking of genres on how things will be listed for sale in iTunes stores not what people decide to label their files once they get them.

 

[J. Golden]

I guess I did not come off to clearly; I was just playing with Itunes when I started thinking of this question- what makes a band AOR oppose to melodic rock, hard rock, etc.

 

[Justin G]

It's all in the eye (ear) of the beholder. There was a time when you wouldn't have thought twice about calling Danger Danger a metal band, but now that seems completely ridiculous. I still don't get how Uriah Heep earned the metal tag. You just have to go case-by-case, I guess.

 

[HeavyGabry]

I try to keep the tags quite broad. Of course it gets me to mistakes such as Bal-Sagoth tagged as Black Metal, but I couldn't use a tag for every artist or create a category for Doom Death or something like that... I do this because it's useful if I want to use my mp3 player in shuffle mode by category.

 

[J. Golden]

It's all in the eye (ear) of the beholder. There was a time when you wouldn't have thought twice about calling Danger Danger a metal band, but now that seems completely ridiculous. I still don't get how Uriah Heep earned the metal tag. You just have to go case-by-case, I guess.

You might of called them a metal band.:Smug:

 

[Justin G]

You might of called them a metal band.:Smug:

Hey, open up any 1989 issue of Metal Edge and you can count the actual metal bands on one hand. That's just how it was at the time.

 

[J. Golden]

Yeah I know, I blame that one women; they wrote Metal Edge and made must of a generation of 12 year old males think Winger was heavy metal. Shit, Winger was not gay enough to be metal - now stuff like
wild Dogs now that is homoerotic enough to be true metal, just look at those outfits.