I figure either your on my side, or your on the other

can you believe they're still having the debates on muchmusic every
other day, "is 'simple plan' punk rock? call in and let us know what
you think!", and "can 'Good Charlotte' be grouped in the same genre
as Rancid?".

How come people don't debate about whether a moped should be
considered a bicycle or a motorbike? you know why, cause no one
gives a fuck. These kids today do though, and the reason why is
because they have been force fed that certain labels are cool to
associate yourself as a fan of and hence, it is important to
evaluate whether a band is cool enough to fit into this stature or
recognition from you. If you think about it, a band is whatever the
hell they want to be considered (and usually the majority when
questioned say they don't want to be labeled into anything) because
they're the ones that make the music and know what sound they are
trying to make. These people spend so much time deciding where the
music fits that they don't even hear the music and become outdated
themselves. There is no line that can be drawn to say "this sound
must be made for the group to be considered punk (or whatever for
that matter)" and hence the only way it is done is by comparing the
band to other bands that have been deemed legitimate or pros in the
category. Reason #235 why labels should be ditched in favour of
comparing artists to a mixture of other bands. You say "that's to
hard to do?". i say anythings better then the organization in stores
today. There are so many genres out there today that record stores
cannot secure a space for 1/4 of them, so what do they do, they stir
the debate by generalizing and putting bands that "to the general
public" don't belong in a certain genre in that section of their
library and therefore make it difficult for a fan to find what they
are looking for.

Ask these two questions to 10 people on the street or your friends
and I would be outright shocked if one, just 1 person knew the answer
to both. 'What does 'emo' stand for?' and 'what is
"folk music" defined as?'. In respective order the answers are: 1)
emotional music, 2) unpopular music. And although the majority of
us, didn't know what these labels stood for, many of us can group
bands we know in either category: in 1) dashboard and in 2)
beck (Sea Change). Yet, we know them both as "Rock" in the record store.

My solution, have music stores put all music together organized
alphabetically from a-z, from Abba to Zappa. Easy to find what your
looking for unless you have english problems. Then there's the whole
issue about 'new bands' and how do you know if you would like it
without knowing what kind of music they play, that's where i figure a
little sticker on the front should come into play that says "Along
the lines of "this band" meets "this band". It would give the kids a
general idea of whether they would like it or not. By the way, any
music fan should be able to tell by the covers of the cd what
"genre" they are getting.