Fortunately or unfortunately you have to be able to market music somehow. Otherwise
musicians would be obscure. To do this, you produce labels. Yes it matters what it's called if you care about exposing good music to the public. I think that it matters what you are selling.

The categories no longer fit the classical definitions of the music. For example, academic
folklorists would say that Pete Seeger and Joan Baez are not folk musicians since they come from a "trained" perspective and not part of an agrarian culture that supported them.

"Classical" music is now a misnomer as well. Some today think of American Jazz as being a "classical" music and there is a case to be made here.

Some say that Bluegrass or Blues are different than "folk" so that label has been bowdlerized.

What makes a difference however is that in order to introduce certain types of music to
the public, this requires a definition of what they play. The problem arises as to whom the definition falls.

The critics today don't know too much about a variety of music enough to make informed
and educational contributions that would support musical artists. Many don't see the connection between the music they review and its antecedents or history.

For example, the recent development of Bluegrass is predicated on the early string band ensembles that played for dances in the Appalachian community which would be considered "folk" by historians familiar with this idiom.

Those who think that Rap or Hip Hop started in a vacuum and   sprouted out of the ground do not see the connection between a rhythmic speech narrative style of performance that is in the African and African American cultures. The griots of Senegal
make this clear as does the political commentary of Fela Kouti (maybe one of the
earlier starters of "rap"). The early poetry to jazz experiment in the early Sixties (Ken Nordeen or Bob Dorough) may have had some effect inadvertently also.

In short, it not only matters what music is called, it matters how music is affected historically and culturally and only this context can it really be appreciated or understood.

Frank Hamilton