I came to Reddit to learn how musicians and audiences think about discovery, AI, and live music in 2026. I learned a lot.
Now it’s time for me to get back to building, performing, and supporting working musicians in the real world.
Wishing the sincere creators here the best.
I’m 68 years old and been a pro bass player since 1979. At first a lot of band bookings were done by word-of-mouth, and then later agents helped out filling in dates. Hotels like Holiday Inn, Ramada Inn, Sheraton, etc…would have bands playing 4 to 5 nights per week, steady pay, money was good, and you could fill in a weekend with a wedding or two. Also, there weren't as many bands to compete with in the local area, maybe 9-12.
Flash forward 40 years and it's a totally different story.
Now bands have to pay Google Ads, venue-favored lists, TheKnot, TheBash, etc… to play, knowing all the while, if they aren’t on the first page, they may not be discovered.
So they give up 20-25% to an agent.
How painful does it need to get before bands realize that the old discovery system (genre categorization) that worked years ago (when there were fewer bands) isn’t working like it used to?
And that there’s strength in numbers when bands unite behind a new system of categorization.
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“Bands are discovered through the artists they cover”
Let that sink in for a moment…
That's right. As catalogs grow, genre alone creates too much noise and not enough signal.
Physical media required exclusive categories.
Digital discovery allows overlapping identity.
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I’ve been thinking about something lately…
Maybe genre-based discovery is becoming outdated.
Not completely useless — but outdated as the *primary* way musicians and bands get discovered online.
Genres made perfect sense in the physical world:
\- Record stores needed shelves.
\- Libraries needed categories.
\- Newspapers and venue guides had limited space.
“Rock.”
“Jazz.”
“Funk.”
“Wedding Band.”
Simple.
But the internet changed discovery.
When planners hire bands today, do they really think:
“I want a pop band”?
Or do they think:
“I want music that feels like Bruno Mars, Dua Lipa, Journey, Earth Wind & Fire, or Taylor Swift.”
That’s a very different search behavior.
“Pop” is too broad now.
Two bands in the same genre can feel completely different emotionally, visually, and energetically.
I think modern music discovery is shifting from:
Genre-based → artist-intent based.
People don’t buy genres.
They buy feelings, familiarity, nostalgia, trust, energy, and specific musical experiences.
Curious what other musicians think about this.
Are genres still the best discovery system?
Or are they just leftover architecture from the physical media era?