Genres
Wolves
Mark Rushton’s Curator Mindset is a place where I talk in 2026 about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist, tech things, and provide music recommendations. This is being released on Saturday, March 14, 2026.
Topics:
Genres
Isabel Pine - “Wolves”
Genres
As a composer of different kinds of music, “genres” are probably the most difficult thing to figure out.
If I played “rockabilly” or “metal”, it might be easier. But then some anorak would want to go into the weeds, questioning me about “shockabilly” or “death metal” or whatever.
After decades of contemplating everything related to “genre”, all I can say is that 1. It’s a mess at the distributor and streaming service level, and 2. Composers better pick something, and 3. Don’t be afraid of using the word robots to figure it out.
The word robots may hallucinate and make slop, but they’re a pretty good thesaurus.
I bet most composers, musicians, and recording artists wonder where they fit in the world today. As a composer, I think it’s helpful for me to first define my music by genre or sub-genre.
This opinion might bother artists, or people trying to make a name for themselves. “Don’t try to be ‘Mark Rushton’” - whoever that is. I could release my 127th album, or whatever number I’m up to these days, and the world will shrug and move along and say, “I’ve never heard of Mark Rushton...”
But if you start off with known genres such as “ambient”, “electronic classical”, “minimal”, “musique concrète”, “sound collage”, or something in that genre ballpark, then you give the potential listener a better reason to listen.
Every distributor handles genre differently. Some distributors never update their list. And that list of genres you carefully consider gets reinterpreted by the streaming service. I may put “Genre: Electronic, Sub-genre: Ambient” at a distributor, but it ends up as “Dance” on specific streaming services. With some distributors, if you indicate yourself as “jazz” or “classical”, you run into a barrier when it comes to getting your music on certain streaming services. That’s a problem, but it’s mainly because of Apple.
At DISCO, where I regularly push out music to radio stations, I always “lead with the genre”. Again, the radio stations don’t know who Mark Rushton is, but they know what Electronic / Ambient is. Let the MD or PD know which specialty show or DJ the submission should be routed.
It’s the same thing with submissions to music libraries. On your first submission, or your tenth, nobody cares who “Mark Rushton” is. But they do care if you’ve got “instrumental ambient underscore with slight tension” or “upbeat country pop with female vocals”. I don’t have any of the latter, but you get my drift.
Isabel Pine - “Wolves”
I saw this on Qobuz a few weeks ago, liked this first track, and only recently got back to the album. I’ve been a little busy.
Qobuz says it’s “ambient”, but this is clearly cello and viola with minor processing.
So is it “ambient”? Is it “classical electronique”? Minimal? I have no idea.
One of the word robots said that her work “sits at the intersection of ambient, modern classical, and experimental music” and “[draws] comparisons to modern classical and ambient artists such as Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Jessica Moss.”
That’s good enough for me. Lead with the genres and then compliment it with similar artists. I don’t know who “Isabel Pine” is otherwise, so that works.
It is on Kranky - a label that has excellent curation, in my opinion.
If you like this kind of music, also check out The OO-Ray.
Find out more about me at https://www.markrushton.com
I make “experimental” music with sound recordings and modular synths, but also vocals and guitars. Earlier today, I was getting ready to upload to a distributor for the first time and got stuck at the ‘genre’ section. This is helpful, thank you!