A review of a Japanese noise cassette could fit under Noise, Reviews, Cassettes, and Labels. File it in all four, though, and those archives soon become overlapping lists with no clear purpose. Someone opening “Cassettes” may want collecting advice; someone opening “Noise” may be looking for listening guides. The question is where the review belongs first.
Categories are the broad sections of a publication. They give readers a way into the back catalogue, especially when they arrive at one post and want something related without knowing an artist’s name. Each category should make a clear promise about the subject or purpose of the writing inside it. Tags can carry narrower details across those boundaries: a format, technique, place, or recurring question.
Start with the archive, not a blank menu
Before naming sections, lay out what you’ve published alongside the pieces realistically planned for the next few months. Sort them by why someone would seek them out. An article about how sustained sound changes over time serves a different purpose from a guide to assessing a used record’s condition, even if both mention drone. That may be a stronger case for separate Listening and Collecting sections than for a split between Ambient and Drone.
A working sheet needs only a title, primary subject, the question the piece answers, and a provisional category. Look at the piles that result. One article with no plausible follow-up does not yet need its own section. A pile of reviews, practical guides, and field-recording essays may be too mixed to tell readers what awaits them. Equal-sized piles are not the goal; a specialist journal can have a substantial listening archive and a small but useful section on formats.
Name sections for the reader’s next move
“Resources” and “Insights” reveal little. “Listening Guides” points toward close attention to sound; “Record Collecting” suggests editions, condition, and playback. Use familiar terms when they’re accurate, and be more specific when a broad label would mislead. “Artists” could hold profiles, interviews, and performance reports. If it holds only profiles, “Artist Profiles” makes a better promise.
Try the name in a sentence: “After reading this piece, someone could open ___ to find more writing of the same kind.” If it needs a long explanation, revise the name or the grouping. Check how it looks in a compact menu, too. A nuanced label is of little use if readers can’t scan it.
Choose one organising principle for the top level
Music writing can be sorted by genre, format, editorial form, listening practice, or social context. Problems arise when all of these become equal-ranking categories. “Noise,” “Interviews,” “Cassettes,” and “Japan” answer different questions; a single post could sit in every one of them.
For a journal covering Japanese experimental and underground music, the main sections might instead follow what the writing helps readers do:
- Listening and Sound for close readings of techniques, textures, and recordings.
- Artists and Collectives for work centred on people and their collaborations.
- Formats and Circulation for cassettes, records, labels, distribution, and collecting.
- Live and Place for performances, venues, festivals, and the conditions of listening on site.
These are examples, not a ready-made menu. If the published work is chiefly organised around genres, Noise, Ambient, and Drone may be better entry points. Let the archive and the distinctions readers need decide. A small site rarely needs both a full genre hierarchy and a full editorial-form hierarchy in its main menu.
When two organising principles matter, give categories one job and tags the other. A Listening and Sound essay might carry a “drone” tag; a Formats and Circulation piece might carry “cassettes.” That tag can connect work across sections without giving each post several category assignments. It helps with writing that crosses genres, too: a piece about listening across genres in Japanese experimental music would sit awkwardly under a single genre name.
Write the boundary before publishing the label
Give each category a short inclusion rule that another editor could apply. For instance: “Formats and Circulation covers how recordings are made available, acquired, documented, and kept; it does not include every review of a cassette.” The exclusion matters. Without it, the section could turn into a second, incomplete reviews archive.
Test proposed sections with difficult cases, not just obvious fits:
- Put five existing titles under the label. Is their shared purpose apparent?
- Try three borderline titles, choosing one primary home for each.
- Note where a tag or an in-text link would keep a useful connection without adding another category.
- Consider what a reader would find on page two of the archive, beyond its newest posts.
Say a profile discusses an artist’s cassette releases at length. If it’s chiefly about the artist’s practice, Artists and Collectives is its home, with “cassettes” as a possible tag. If it examines how an edition was documented and circulated, Formats and Circulation may fit better. File the article by the work it does, not by every noun it contains.
Keep category and tag roles distinct
A category should hold enough writing to make a useful archive, and its scope should be describable in a few sentences. A tag can mark a more specific connection, but it still needs a purpose. Make one for every instrument, city, and passing reference, and readers will encounter thin archives. Decide whether a tag marks a central subject or a mere mention, then use that rule for old and new posts alike.
Some pieces resist a neat split. A field-recording essay may deal with sound, place, and recording method. Give it one primary category based on its central argument, then a few precise tags. If two essays belong in conversation, a descriptive link between them may do more than filing both in several places. Categories provide routes through the writing; they don’t have to account for every relationship.
Make the archive page earn its place
A menu label is only the entrance. A short archive description can explain how “Live and Place” differs from an events calendar, or make clear that “Listening and Sound” includes close listening, not just beginner guides. Keep it factual, and change it if the section’s scope changes.
Look at the post list itself. In a chronological archive, titles need to tell readers what each piece offers. If the site supports excerpts, use them to distinguish a review from an interview or practical guide. Large archives need clear ordering and pagination more than a decorative introduction. A nearly empty category, meanwhile, has little reason to occupy a prominent menu slot.
Show the sections readers are most likely to browse, not every category stored in the publishing system. A category can organise posts without appearing in the top-level menu. Check that menu on a phone as well as a wide screen: truncated names and crowded dropdowns can blur distinctions that looked sound on an editorial planning sheet.
Change categories without losing the trail
An existing site may need fewer labels, not more. Look for near-duplicates, categories created by a single accidental assignment, and catchalls that hide distinct kinds of writing. Reassign posts one by one against the new boundaries. A keyword is no substitute for reading the piece: mentioning a cassette does not make a post about cassette culture.
If archive URLs change, keep old addresses accessible where the publishing setup allows it. Then check navigation and internal references. Someone may have bookmarked an old archive even if it drew little visible discussion. Make sure posts that lose a former category still appear somewhere useful, and keep a short record of the old and new names in case you need to correct an assignment later.
Revisit the structure when enough new work has accumulated to test it, not whenever an unusual article appears. Check the ten most recent assignments in each section. If Formats and Circulation is filling with listening reviews simply because they were issued on tape, enforce its inclusion rule before inventing another label.
For the next ambiguous post, write down its proposed primary category and a one-sentence reason before adding tags. “This piece explains how a recording circulates through a cassette label” makes a case for Formats and Circulation. “It mentions cassettes” doesn’t.