History ArtifactTitle / Music

* Music/FrankZappa and Herb Cohen co-founded two companion record labels, Bizarre Records and Straight Records, with the intention to release avant-garde music on Bizarre and music with more commercial potential on Straight. Bizarre Records had some distribution and management issues, while Straight did not: As a result, Bizarre ended up mostly releasing Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention albums, and Straight ended up releasing some music that was anything but "straight" (most notably Music/CaptainBeefheart's ''Music/TroutMaskReplica'' and [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the early, psychedelic]] Music/AliceCooper albums).

* When KROQ put on their second mid-December concert, it was turned into an acoustic event called "Acoustic Christmas" that fit well with the softer, sappier season and the alternative singer-songwriter fare that was popular in the early 1990s. When the concert series became yearly and increased in popularity, attracting attention from bigger and more rocking bands, the acoustic element was not made mandatory, so it was renamed "Almost Acoustic Christmas." In the decades that followed, the acoustic element is largely an afterthought, but the name remains.
* In 1992, the Big Valley Jamboree started off as a rock music festival in Big Valley, Alberta. The following year, it became an annual country music festival in Camrose, Alberta, which it has remained as ever since.
* Ottawa's Cisco Systems [=BluesFest=] (formerly the Ottawa Blues Festival) started out as a festival of Blues music (although the headliner of the first festival was Clarence Clemons; a fine musician, but not quite a Blues musician). For years now, as the festival has grown exponentially in size and profile, it has expanded its repertoire to include a wide variety of music styles, including Urban, ClassicRock and HeavyMetal, but thanks to the original branding, still has Blues in its name. Every year when the new lineup is announced, the same tired complaints about how "there's no Blues in the [=BluesFest=]" come up, even though there are always plenty of legit Blues musicians on the undercard and side stages. Bizarrely, one headliner in recent years that drew complaints from this faction were Music/TheWhiteStripes, who, although an AlternativeRock band, do actually have a lot of Blues influence in their music, and opened up their [=BluesFest=] set with covers of John Lee Hooker and Son House songs.

* The Rock in Rio music festival got its name due to the event taking place in Rio de Janeiro. The title became an artifact once the event branched into new locations[[note]]Thus far: Lisbon, Madrid, and Las Vegas.[[/note]], and also for being less focused on rock and having other genres of music.

* None of the Woodstock festivals have ever actually been held in the town of Woodstock, NY. The name qualifies as an artifact since the original promoters, Woodstock Ventures, Inc., was indeed based in Woodstock (the idea was that the profits from the concert would be enough to fund the construction of a recording studio, the real project). The first one was held in Bethel, not even in the same county; the 10th anniversary show was at Madison Square Garden; the impromptu 20th anniversary was at the original site, the 1994 Woodstock was held in Saugerties, which at least borders on Woodstock, and the 1999 event was held at a former Air Force base in Rome, NY, almost a hundred miles away. The 40th anniversary was marked by a national tour. The 50th anniversary festival was originally planned for the Watkins Glen racetrack in New York's Finger Lakes, some 200 miles from Woodstock (and the site of a 1973 festival that outdrew the original Woodstock), but troubles with money and permits led the organizers to first try to move it to Vernon, NY (near Rome), then move it completely out of New York to a site in Maryland, before finally cancelling the whole thing after artists started withdrawing from the lineup ''en masse''.

* The UsefulNotes/{{Woodstock}} festival actually was originally supposed to take place in Woodstock, NY, but had to be moved to the town of Bethel, about 50 miles away.

* "Unchained Melody" was named after the movie it originally appeared in, ''Unchained''. The movie is largely forgotten, but thanks to covers and use in other movies (most notably ''Film/Ghost1990''), the melody is still popular. It still works as a title because the lyrics are about a man wondering if his lover will still be there for him when he's released from ''prison'', and therefore becomes "unchained".

* In a similar vein, Music/LedZeppelin did it the other way around, with an album called ''Music/HousesOfTheHoly'', and a song with that name on the album, ''Music/PhysicalGraffiti.'' Also, ''Music/HousesOfTheHoly'' has a song titled, "The Song Remains the Same", which was used as the title of their first live album. That song does not appear on the live album, nor the film, ''Film/TheSongRemainsTheSame.''
* The band Music/DanielAmos initially used their Bandcamp webpage exclusively to sell "official bootleg" live recordings, so the URL was "danielamosboots.bandcamp.com". Then they also started selling their studio albums, and even albums by frontman Terry Scott Taylor's various side projects, but the name "Daniel Amos Boots" stuck for years. In 2020 or so, they finally changed the URL to "terryscotttaylor.bandcamp.com" to more accurately reflect what they had there.

* Music/MeatPuppets' ''Golden Lies'' is again named for a song that didn't make the album - their lead singer and guitarist Curt Kirkwood later reworked "Golden Lies" for his solo album ''Snow''.

* The "Coronation Scot" (the theme for the BBC series ''Paul Temple'' composed by Vivian Ellis) was not actually based on the ride with the train that has the same name, but rather the train ride that goes from Paddington to Taunton.

* Pop singer Noah Cyrus, younger sister of [[Music/MileyCyrus Miley]], signed a record deal with the RECORDS label in 2016. Her debut album was given the working title, ''NC-17'', a pun on her initials and the age she was when she signed. As of 2021, Noah having aged past 17 long ago, she has yet to release ''NC-17'' or change the name of the album, feeling she did not want to release it until she felt satisfied with the finished project (though she has released many singles and collaborations and played many concerts over the two-year wait, including opening for Music/KatyPerry on Perry's ''Witness'' tour).
* Music/{{Radiohead}}'s song "Nude" at different points in its development had more emphasis on sex in its lyrics and featured lines like "what do you look like when you're nude?" and "we look so funny when we're nude". The song was first released by the band on their album "Music/InRainbows", and this version doesn't explicitly mention sex or nudity, but the title "Nude" remained. Oddly enough, when the song did include lines about sex, its working title was "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)", which would seem more appropriate for the officially released version.

* The Mercury Prize, a British music award, is still named after its original sponsor Mercury Communications, which ceased to exist in 1997.
* The "TVT" in now-defunct record label TVT Records technically stands for "[=TeeVee=] Toons" (i.e. "TV Tunes"): The label's first release was ''Television's Greatest Hits'', a compilation of TV {{theme song}}s. Though TVT periodically released compilations of TV themes and commercial jingles (as well as soundtrack albums to TV shows like ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''), it became better known for music well outside that niche, signing successful acts in varying styles such as Music/NineInchNails and Music/LilJon.
* Music/FrankZappa and Herb Cohen co-founded two companion record labels, Bizarre Records and Straight Records, with the intention to release avant-garde music on Bizarre and music with more commercial potential on Straight. Bizarre Records had some distribution and management issues, while Straight did not: As a result, Bizarre ended up mostly releasing Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention albums, and Straight ended up releasing some music that was anything but "straight" (most notably Music/CaptainBeefheart's ''Music/TroutMaskReplica'' and [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the early, psychedelic]] Music/AliceCooper albums).
* When KROQ put on their second mid-December concert, it was turned into an acoustic event called "Acoustic Christmas" that fit well with the softer, sappier season and the alternative singer-songwriter fare that was popular in the early 1990s. When the concert series became yearly and increased in popularity, attracting attention from bigger and more rocking bands, the acoustic element was not made mandatory, so it was renamed "Almost Acoustic Christmas." In the decades that followed, the acoustic element is largely an afterthought, but the name remains.
* In 1992, the Big Valley Jamboree started off as a rock music festival in Big Valley, Alberta. The following year, it became an annual country music festival in Camrose, Alberta, which it has remained as ever since.

[[folder:Media]]
* The mid-20th century displacement of 78s by long-playing 33⅓ and 45 rpm records led to two terms becoming artifactual:
** The terms single, EP, and LP were introduced with the format ... in fact, all the latter had [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LPlogo.svg a special logo]] on the cover that gave the format its name. They are still used today in describing the length of a recording despite most music coming out on the same format (usually CD or [=MP3=] download) regardless of length.
*** In Germany, the term 'maxi CD' is often used to refer to a CD single. It was originally designed to refer to CD singles which had more than two tracks but came to refer to all of them.
** The term "vinyl" was used at first for these new formats, to distinguish them from the older 78s, which were pressed on shellac (which was used to refer to them). Since vinyl more than made up for its greater propensity to break and warp with far less surface noise and longer running time on [=LPs=], by the late 1950s in the U.S. at least it had completely taken over. "Vinyl" nonetheless continues to be used to refer to all phonographic records, and while it's accurate since that's what they're all made of, it references a distinction that stopped needing to be made a long time ago.
** Similarly, we still refer to discrete selections from an album as "tracks" or "cuts", which makes the most sense on vinyl, even in the digital-download/subscription-streaming era.
** The "long-playing" record, or LP, was so called because it had longer playing time than an 78 rpm or 45 rpm single, usually around 23 minutes per side, but that could be extended with careful disc cutting. Later formats would have even longer running times. Cassettes could contain up to 120 minutes, at the expense of thinner, fragile tape, so the usual maximum on commercially-produced cassettes was 90 minutes, with 45 minutes per side. The CD's running time was initially 74 minutes, but this was later extended to 80 minutes, all on one side. Digital distribution's only limit on running time is the listener's patience.
* Few music "albums" have actually been a book of discs in sleeves ever since the LP format made it convenient to put ~50 minutes of music on just one. And that was several decades ago.
** Similarly, many box sets come in hardback book form with CD holders, rather than in a box.
** "Albums" in the boxed sense were this trope when they were first introduced in the late 1930s. The first record "albums" were books with sleeves, holed in the middle, that records could be stored in and leafed through like photo albums (hence the name). They were introduced around 1909 or so; record companies didn't catch on that they would make multi-song collections a viable release at first.
* The talent scouts of the music industry are known as "A&R people" for their original job: "Artists and Repertoire". In the old days, when singers and songwriters were largely different groups of people, their job was to find the right singer for the right song. They still do that now more than people realize, but largely what they do is look for new talent.
* The idea of "[[BSide B-side]]" songs originated in the era of 45 rpm records when the main song was on the "A-side" and another on the "B-side", but the concept has persisted even in one-sided cassettes, [=CDs=] and digital releases.
* The "flanging" sound effect, used on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recordings_with_a_prominent_flanging_effect many songs]], gets its name from being originally produced by pressing down on the flange of a tape reel. Since the late 1970s, it's been produced purely electronically.
* The companies that produce and distribute pre-recorded music, or the brand names they do it under, are still referred to as "record labels" from the identifying paper sticker on the center of a record. Likewise, In the 1980s, as vinyl gave way to cassettes and [=CDs=], the companies who made them and retailers who sold them would still refer to themselves as "X Records," before the Vinyl Revival of the 21st Century made both the "record" and "label" parts accurate again. [[note]]Record as a noun (rek-erd ) and record as a verb (ri-kord or re-kord) are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Done as text they look the same, so it still makes an odd kind of sense.[[/note]]
* Top 40 lists of hit songs got to that number because it was the amount of 45 rpm singles a jukebox could hold. Jukeboxes are of negligible use today, and those there are use digital streams, but the name has stayed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Genres]]
* AlternativeRock used to be a less-known alternative for the more mainstream sounds at the time of their origin. Nowadays it's the dominant form of rock, and the name is pretty much synonymous with "modern rock." As with "indie" mentioned below, the term reflected these artists being released on independent record labels and played on CollegeRadio, but with alternative's mainstream breakthrough in TheNineties, "alternative" is more an aesthetic than anything else.
* ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_nova Ars Nova]]'', literally "[[TheNewRockAndRoll New Art]]," is the name that was given to a style of music that was developed in the early 14th century, to distinguish it from the earlier Medieval ''Ars Antiqua''. The "''Ars Nova''" label stuck among music scholars to the present day, despite not having been anything like "new" for about [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld 700 years]] now.
* Bossa Nova means "new beat" in Portuguese, but it hasn't been new since the 1960s.
* Much mainstream "CountryMusic" is contemporary pop or rock with a steel guitar and a singer with a twang. There's still a few successful artists that adhere to a more traditional sound, though.
** The very genre name "country music" has been a bit of a misnomer for a while now, since after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the big, sophisticated city of UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}} became the genre's permanent home base.
** Very few these days refer to Country and Western music. Mostly those who would use the old saying, "I like both kinds of music, Country and Western."
* {{Dubstep}} got its name after "Dub", an offshoot of {{Reggae}} known for its emphasis on various studio effects (most notably reverb) as well as the bass, and "2-step", a subgenre of UK Garage that eschews the four-on-the-floor rhythm in favor of a more jittery, irregular beat. While [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GdFXT-2XnI early dubstep tracks]] fits this name well, the "-step" part gradually became obsolete as producers leaned towards half-time beats (half the tempo of regular 2-step) and put more emphasis on "dub-" (sparse, reverb- and bass-heavy sound) [[note]]listen to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEJG9L-n_tE this example]] and compare to the previous one[[/note]]. Eventually, the "dub-" part also became obsolete, as the genre drew influence from HeavyMetal and PostHardcore and became much more aggressive and noisy (what many people today think of as "dubstep" was after this transition), to the point where many old fans would much rather call the new sound a completely different name (such as brostep or filthstep).
* Music/{{Emo}}. Originally used to refer to a less violent and confrontational, more personal type of hardcore punk that was emerging in Washington, D.C. in the 80s, the term is derived from "emocore", which itself was short for "emotional hardcore". Today, "emo" is used to describe a type of music that is barely distinguishable from pop-punk, and the fashion style and the association with any mental state other than "constantly happy". It is notable that some modern-day fans who [[OlderThanTheyThink don't know the history of the genre]] mistakenly believe it's short for simply "emotional".
* Funk carioca sounds almost nothing like traditional funk. Thing is, back in the 1970s, funk and soul were hugely popular in Rio's favelas. But as a new music style[[note]]derived from Miami bass, Latin freestyle, and gangsta rap[[/note]] grew popular and supplanted it, people kept calling the parties "funk balls".
* HeavyMetal changed drastically after Music/VanHalen and the NewWaveOfBritishHeavyMetal. Early 70's bands such as Music/UriahHeep, Mountain, and Music/AliceCooper were considered to be HeavyMetal bands, but the term has changed to mean something different than what these bands sounded like. Today they're usually counted as HardRock.
** The earliest metal bands like Creator/BlackSabbath used various tempos including slow tempos. Later they started down-tuning instruments to create music that often felt slow and heavy, so the name "heavy metal" fit. However, subsequent sub-genres would progressively ramp up the speed, and many did not down-tune, to the point where it wasn’t so slow and "heavy" anymore. Simply using "metal" as an umbrella term to refer to all sub-genres alleviates this somewhat, but even that word alone carries connotations of being slow and heavy that doesn’t necessarily apply to all metal genres.
** For that matter, the same thing happened to PowerMetal (the original name for speed metal, now the name for a style that tends to focus on dramatic instrumentation, fantasy themes, and symphonic elements) and ThrashMetal (which used to mean progressive speed metal with clean vocals, whereas the modern equivalent is often closer to '80s death metal).
** From an instrumental standpoint, most MelodicDeathMetal has more in common with PowerMetal, ThrashMetal, and/or the NewWaveOfBritishHeavyMetal than DeathMetal these days. The HarshVocals are usually closer to the high-pitched rasps and shrieks of BlackMetal, too (although some bands still use death metal-style growls).
* Indie: Even when the band is on a major label, their genre is still short for 'independent'. (However, "indie rock" can also be used to denote a genre, specifically a lo-fi and mellow strain of alternative rock.)
* New Age Music is more of a marketing term. Very few artists labelled as "New Age" actually have any connection to "NewAge" religions. Some of them even reject the label and propose replacements like "Folk Ambient" or "Instrumental Chillout".
** The name came from the attention given to some of its early stars—Andreas Vollenweider, Kitaro, and the Windham Hill artists—in the pages of ''New Age Journal''.
* [[NewWaveMusic New Wave]] peaked in the 1980s and certainly isn't new anymore. It is also worth noting that the term was used in the UK to refer to guitar-led pop music that wasn't punk, while in the US it was used to refer to groups that the UK would call synthpop.
* Many purists fear that Nightcore has become this. Originally, the term referred to a style involving [[SpeedyTechnoRemake speeding up slow electronic music to make it faster and happier]]. But by TheNewTens, people (especially on Website/YouTube) were applying the term to any sped up song, regardless of its original genre.
* Synthwave started off as distinctly '80s sounding (the name is a combo of synthpop and new wave) and would use dreamlike chords and instrumental passages. However, the imagery and synths have been borrowed by numerous modern pop artists that just want to cash in on RuleOfCool.
* Pop: These days if a ballad is released without any rock overtones, country twang, or heavy soul influence, it's pop music, regardless of whether it is Popular or not.
* Pop [insert-genre-here] ends up sounding more pop than that genre. Fast.
* ProgressiveRock originally got its name from the "progressive" FM radio stations it was played on in the U.S. These were so-called because the [=DJs=] would, between playing the bands' latest ''magna opera'', spend almost as much time as the songs themselves took to discuss politics from a progressive (i.e., very leftist) perspective. The name for the subgenre has remained even as the stations became increasingly all about the music, and even as FM radio of the early 1970s evolved into today's classic-rock format.
* In the '60s, RAndB music stood for rhythm & blues music and was often applied to blues rock groups. Over the decades, it evolved into its present term: soul-influenced pop music. This has had the controversial side-effect of labeling (and pigeonholing) all black pop singers as R&B even if soul isn't their style.
* Rock-n-Roll initially referred to what we would call "pop music" today: music that's popular with young people. But over the years, rock became its own distinct genre. This has led to pedantic whining whenever discussions of rock-n-roll include pop, R&B, hip-hop, EDM, and so on, such as when artists from these genres are inducted into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. Their inclusion is true to the ''original'' definition of rock-n-roll rather than how rock is defined now.
* TrapMusic got its name after "trap houses", which in Atlanta slang mean places where drugs are manufactured and/or sold. As the genre exploded in popularity worldwide in the 2010s, the drug connotation is gradually diluted.
[[/folder]]

* Occasionally, a musician from a band that has broken up will join a new band, and that band will use the old band's name to take advantage of the name recognition and/or record contract. Happened notably with Music/{{Scorpions|Band}} in the early 1970s and Music/AliceInChains in the late 1980s[[note]] Lead singer Layne Staley was originally part of a HairMetal band called "Alice N' Chains". When he later formed a new band, he adopted the former name with some minor changes[[/note]].

* ''Music/{{Ayreon}}'''s title character dies at the end of the first album, and subsequent albums don't feature him at all or have anything to do with him, apart from one song on a later album. Now a completely new story has started, making the title even more of an artifact.

* Sixty-something soft-rock duo George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam are still mostly known as Music/BoyMeetsGirl.

* Some Chilean bands had one more member than the title suggest because the last member joined shortly after the original inception and [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg the rest weren't too keen to change it]]:
** 'Banana 5' are 6 members
** 'Los cuatro cuartos' (The four quarters) are 5 members.
** 'Los Tres' (The three) were 4 members.

* The Air from J.S. Bach's ''Orchestral Suite No.3 in D major'' is commonly known as "Air on the G-String" after a once-popular arrangement created by 19th-century violinist August Wilhelmj, even though it is now more usually played in its original arrangement.[[note]] As the melody only covers a range of a minor tenth (A4-C6), it can be played quite easily on a single string; the original version can theoretically be performed entirely on the A string, but Wilhelmj transposed the piece down by a major ninth so that it could be played on the G string.[[/note]]
* Underworld's famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlLWFa1b1Bc "Born Slippy.NUXX"]] is a [[InNameOnly completely different]] tune from the obscure [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey7a8Km6Aw8 original song "Born Slippy"]]. It only got named so because it was on the same EP. Thus, many people mistake it to be the original, especially remixers of the song whose only credit is as "Born Slippy".

* Rock music in general could be considered an ArtifactTitle. Many people use the phrase "rock 'n roll" nowadays to describe many different kinds of music that no one would mistake for Music/ElvisPresley.

* Music/{{TLC}}'s name became this following Lisa "Lefteye" Lopes's 2002 death.

* Music/TheChemicalBrothers were originally The Dust Brothers before the American production duo of that name (Music/{{Beck}}, Music/{{Hanson}}) threatened legal action. Their first album is called ''Exit Planet Dust'' in reference to this. The song "In Dust We Trust" retained its title even though it was no longer self-referential.

* Minor example/possible aversion: Music/{{Blondie}} was so named because there were two other blonde singers present for their early rehearsals, [[ThePeteBest both of whom left before they ever played live or recorded anything]]. This has resulted in a lot of IAmNotShazam moments for the remaining blonde singer Debbie Harry.

* The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has long expanded beyond what's traditionally considered rock music, with country, blues, R&B, pop, and rap artists having been inducted over the years. This has led to a BrokenBase among fans and musicians, as many feel that only "pure" rock artists should be honored and chafe when someone like Music/{{Madonna}} or Music/TupacShakur is inducted over a rock band. Others argue there's now a distinction between the rock genre itself and "rock-n-roll" as a catch-all term for all popular music (albeit a dated one), and that honoring musicians who play "traditional rock" leaves out most modern artists. Music/DollyParton even expressed confusion at having been nominated since rock wasn't her genre, before learning that the organization's name had been a misnomer for a while.

** The earliest metal bands like "Black Sabbath" used various tempos including slow tempos. Later they started down-tuning instruments to create music that often felt slow and heavy, so the name "heavy metal" fit. However, subsequent sub-genres would progressively ramp up the speed, and many did not down-tune, to the point where it wasn’t so slow and "heavy" anymore. Simply using "metal" as an umbrella term to refer to all subgenres alleviates this somewhat, but even that word alone carries connotations of being slow and heavy that doesn’t necessarily apply to all metal genres.

* Music/GunsNRoses is named after Tracii Guns and Axl Rose. [[ThePeteBest The former]] was fired by [[IAmTheBand the latter]] after missing rehearsals, being replaced by Slash.

* Russian rave band Little Big started out as a quartet with included two little women (hence, the name reflected the contrast in size between the members of the band). As of 2018, both have left and no new little people joined the band, yet the name remains.

* The companies that produce and distribute pre-recorded music, or the brand names they do it under, are still referred to as "record labels" from the identifying paper sticker on the center of a record. Likewise, In the 1980s, as vinyl gave way to cassettes and [=CDs=], the companies who made them and retailers who sold them would still refer to themselves as "X Records," before the Vinyl Revival of the 21st Century made both the "record" and "label" parts accurate again. [[note]]Record as a noun (rek-erd ) and record as a verb(ri-kord or re-kord) are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Done as text they look the same, so it still makes an odd kind of sense.[[/note]]

* In 1992, Big Valley Jamboree started off as a rock music festival in Big Valley, Alberta. The following year, it became an annual country music festival in Camrose, Alberta, which it has remained as ever since.