I've never really understood the "Music" genre here. How is it supposed to be used? "Musical" (and/or "Theatrical") I could understand as a modifier to Comedy, Drama, etc. "Music" reads like a subject not a style of filmmaking, so to me "music+documentary" means a documentary about music and musicians - Ken Burns Jazz, The Punk Singer, The Decline of Western Civilization, etc. Live concert performances, no matter how artfully filmed or studded with interviews and backstage shenanigans, are something different. I collect both, and would never put them together.

Somebody brought up sporting events. Similarly, I would not expect to find a recording of the 1984 World Series alongside actual sports documentaries like the 30 for 30 films.

That said, I am all for having a better way to categorize live performances. I have always relied on the "concert film" keyword for music concerts (in conjunction with "Music" genre) and stand-up (in conjunction with "Comedy" genre). Plays and musicals, unfortunately, have no consistent keyword to distinguish them from "movies that contain singing", which is how I see the Music genre being used. IMDb has a "Musical" genre, but lumps plays in with films as Drama, Comedy, etc.

I don't disagree that "Music" is poor choice for a genre category. It is far too broad.

The point I was trying to make is that technically all concert films are in fact documentaries by definition. Given that fact it is not wrong to include them in the "Documentary" genre. Does it make sense to do so? No, not in my opinion which it why I don't include them as documentaries in my personal library. I am not advocating for concerts to have a "Documentary" genre however doing so is not completely inappropriate. If I'm not mistaken I believe that most if not all concert films listed on IMDB include "Documentary" as a genre. In any case, I would definitely support the creation of a "Concert" genre.

I personally do not automatically include "Documentary" as a genre for concerts when cataloguing my personal library unless it is what I consider to be a documentary, example; Woodstock. I do not consider Stop Making Sense a documentary but rather an excellent concert film. Most media management software allows for the addition of genres like Concerts, Stand-up, etc. so that's how I deal with it for my collection.

I definitely understand wanting to categorize concert films separately from other types of films. That's why I made this post to begin with. Because they're currently lumped together with narrative films. To me, having them lumped together with other films documenting actual events makes much more sense if we're sticking with the current genres. Though I agree with you both that adding a concert or live performance tag would be ideal.

The funny thing is, the ancient forum thread titled Genre cleanup & consolidation included "Music Videos & Concerts" and "Musical" on the final proposed list.

The same thing happened with TV I believe. There were changes proposed that never actually happened. I learned this while discussing the fact that there should be a Horror genre for TV.

@JuanMortyme said:

The point I was trying to make is that technically all concert films are in fact documentaries by definition. Given that fact it is not wrong to include them in the "Documentary" genre.

That is not necessarily a fact, it is your opinion. On that basis, I suppose you also consider every stand-up special to be a documentary. I think many would disagree, but I don't see any value in endlessly splitting hairs.

And by the way, this site is neither Wikipedia nor IMDb, so folks should probably quit citing those sources' standards in their arguments. This site has its own rules, some of which I disagree with. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time worrying about it and arguing. It is what it is.