Musical genre classification: Is it worth pursuing and how can it be improved?

Research in automatic genre classification has been producing increasingly small performance gains in recent years, with the result that some have suggested that such research should be abandoned in favor of more general similarity research. It has been further argued that genre classification is of limited utility as a goal in itself because of the ambiguities and subjectivity inherent to genre. This paper presents a number of counterarguments that emphasize the importance of continuing research in automatic genre classification. Specific strategies for overcoming current performance limitations are discussed, and a brief review of background research in musicology and psychology relating to genre is presented. Insights from these highly relevant fields are generally absent from discourse within the MIR community, and it is hoped that this will help to encourage a more multi-disciplinary approach to automatic genre classification in the future.