What's the best website for learning about your favorite music subgenre?

September 27, 2013 11:36 AM

I'm interested in learning about music based on specific subgenres. I feel like I acquire new music in a sort of scattershot way, hearing things randomly and liking them or not liking them. Which is mostly fine! But I don't think I have a good sense of how different musicians have influenced each other or how people who make music define the sort of music they make. I would like to focus on one subgenre at a time and learn about it, try to figure out how it works and what I think of it. So pick your favorite niche subgenre and give me the single best website for learning about that genre.

Ideally, I'd like a website that has:
--detailed reviews of albums or tracks (preferably in text form, not as a podcast, though I'd take a podcast if you think the one you're reccing is really the best source)
--links to the music so I can listen online for free and compare to the review

Focusing on new releases or older stuff is fine either way. Any type of music. Also, the more specific your subgenre, the better - I'm not interested in "indie" or "country" since those are too broad. More like "Norwegian grindcore" level of specificity.

posted by marginaliana to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

This is sort of orthogonal to your request, but a good place for sampling a bit about every specific subgenre is Every Noise At Once.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 11:53 AM on September 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

Various ILX threads do this pretty well. A few examples:

soft sad techno
"kinda arty kinda electronic stuff which gets compared to "The Knife" type stuff"
posted by subtle-t at 12:01 PM on September 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

I highly recommend Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music. I know that sounds really general, but it's broken down into subgenres as specific as "Dutch Eurotrance" and "Speed Garage" and "Illbient". The subgenres are all mapped by time and relationship, so you can see how they developed in relationship to one another. And each subgenre has a critique and 3-10 example tracks so you can hear it in action. It can be a bit subjective in places, but it's a great introduction with both depth and breadth.
posted by ourobouros at 12:19 PM on September 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Ishkur's was super helpful for me when I got into Electronic Music, glad to see it's still around.
posted by radioamy at 12:52 PM on September 27, 2013

I would highly recommend Rate Your Music. Here's their list of genres. If you click on any genre and then click on the "see all" on the top right, you can see the charts for that specific genre, which you can then filter by year, genre etc. I'd also suggest looking at the RYM Ultimate Box Set, with a playlist for just about any genre you can think of.

The forums on RYM are really active and helpful as well. I've asked and received great advice about genres I didn't know existed.
posted by kdern at 4:41 PM on September 27, 2013