Are you a lumper or a splitter?

There's a philosophical divide in the science of taxonomy (the study of the classification of organisms, for example why humans are Homo sapiens in the family Hominidae and wolves are Canis lupus in the family Canidae). On the one side are the lumpers, who prefer to classify organisms into larger groups based on substantial differences, resulting in fewer species overall, while the splitters prefer to use minute differences to classify living organisms into a greater number of separate groups. My explanation is a bit of a caricature, and it's not truly correct to say that all taxonomists fall into one or the other groups, but it is an apt enough description to be useful in describing an important debate with far-reaching implications. For example, the determination of whether or not a group of animals is a distinct species rather than just another population of a species with a larger range can have a critical impact on the degree of protection it receives. (You can google "Preble's jumping mouse" if you want to see just how controversial this can be.)

Another, equally serious area where this debate rages is in my music collection. I'm currently in the process of digitizing all of my cassettes, records, and CDs and importing the tracks into iTunes. Because one of the main fields on which iTunes allows you to sort your music is the genre, I've taken it upon myself to apply a genre to each album that I enter into my digital library. I'm getting most of the data about each album from an online database (the CDDB) so that I don't have to enter the title of every last track. Genre is one of the fields that you can get from the CDDB, but I've been pretty disappointed by the results. First off, you can get some strange, sub-, sub-genres. (Did you know that both the Chemical Brothers and the Crystal Method ply their trade in a genre called "Big Beat?"). Clearly, the splitters are in charge at the CDDB. But I don't find it useful to have a distinct genre for every third album. On a more practical note, the information is uploaded by users, which means it can be very inconsistent. On more than one occasion, I've queried the database for double albums where the first and second CDs in the set come back with different genres. For these reasons, I've decided to enter my own genres, which means I have waded headlong into the murky waters of the lumper/splitter debate.

Interestingly, I think I'm philosophically more of a lumper when it comes to my music. I say "interestingly" because I think I'm more of a splitter (at least to a point) in the realm of biology. I think where I fall in both arenas hinges on practical arguments. In biology, I tend to favor anything that emphasizes greater conservation, and the splitter philosophy tends to take this into account. (I'll save its shortcomings for another day; you'll have to enroll in my conservation biology class to get the low-down ;-) ) In my music, I think it makes more sense to have larger groups. I often think "I'm in the mood for X" when I'm gazing at my CD collection, waffling over what to play, so it makes sense to have some way to divide the music into different groups. But I also feel strongly that the music shouldn't be balkanized into many separate little subgenres. I may think "I'm in the mood for something electronic," but I doubt I'll ever think "I sure could go for some Big Beat right now."

So with my philosophical underpinnings set, I'm categorizing my music as I digitize it. I'm through the K's, and although I'm relatively happy with the categories that I've come up with, I'm also noticing some worrying trends. For example, nearly a fifth of the music seems to fall into the maligned "Alternative" genre. This is probably because Alternative has become my default for anything that doesn't quite fit anywhere else, including, but not limited to, bands that you might think of as traditionally "Alternative" like REM. (Careful readers may note that although I'm going in alphabetical order, I've skipped ahead for a few bands.) And I don't even want to get into what to do about bands that play more than one genre within one album. For example, Steve Earle's "The Revolution Starts Now" got categorized country -- even though it's probably more of a rock album -- because he has a bit of a twang in his voice and one of the songs is a duet with Emmylou Harris.

A few of the more vexing problems beyond the preponderance of Alternative music have been determining what is "Rock" and how is it different from other genres, and is "Classic Rock" a legitimate category? (Provisionally, I've decided no.) What about "Progressive Rock" (also no) and "Space Rock" (a tentative yes). What about "Trip Hop?" (Another tentative yes, it may only have a couple records, but where else do you put Massive Attack and Portishead?) Is Hip-Hop/Rap destined to be a catch-all, or should I subdivide it?

So my system is still a work in progress. I've been adding genres as I go, which also means I have to go back and fix the metadata for some of the albums that I added earlier on in the process. I'm curious to hear if other folks have had to deal with this, and what you've ended up doing.