This is a list of music genres and styles. Music can be described in terms of many genres and styles. Classifications are often arbitrary, and may be disputed and closely related forms often overlap. Larger genres and styles comprise more specific sub-categories.
Classical
Popular
Blues
Country
Easy listening
Electronic
Folk
Hip hop
Jazz
Pop
Rock
Metal
Punk
Regional
African
Antarctica
Asian
- Central Asian
- East Asian
Chinese:
Hong Kong, China:
Taiwanese:
Japanese:
Korean:
- South Asian
Sri Lankan:
- Southeast Asian
Malaysian:
Indonesian:
Thai:
Filipino:
Lao:
Vietnamese:
- Middle Eastern
European
- Balkan States
- Baltic States
- Caucasus
- Central European States
- Nordic/Scandinavian States
- Slavic States
- Western European
- Brazilian
- Caribbean
- Hispanic
North American
Religious
Traditional folk
Other
- Ballroom dance music: pasodoble, cha cha cha and others
- Children's music
- Dance music
- Drug use in music
- Incidental music or music for stage and screen: music written for the score of a film, play, musicals, or other spheres, such as filmi, video game music, music hall songs and showtunes and others
- Bedroom production
- Patriotic music: military music, marches, national anthems, War songs and related compositions
- PC Music
- Regional and national music with no significant commercial impact abroad, except when it is a version of an international genre, such as: traditional music, oral traditions, sea shanties, work songs, nursery rhymes, Arabesque and indigenous music. In North America and Western Europe, regional and national genres that are not from the Western world are sometimes classified as world music.
- Theatre music
- Virtuoso
- Yodeling
These categories are not exhaustive. A music platform, Gracenote, listed more than 2000 music genres (included by those created by ordinary music lovers, who are not involved within the music industry, these being said to be part of a 'folksonomy', i.e. a taxonomy created by non-experts). Most of these genres were created by music labels to target new audiences, however classification is useful to find music and distribute it.
See also
This list is split into four separate pages:
Bibliography
- Borthwick, Stuart, & Moy, Ron (2004) Popular Music Genres: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Fabbri, Franco (1982) A Theory of Popular Music Genres: Two Applications. In Popular Music Perspectives, edited by David Horn and Philip Tagg, 52–81. Göteborg and Exeter: A. Wheaton & Co., Ltd.
- Frith, Simon (1996) Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
- Holt, Fabian (2007) Genre in Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Negus, Keith (1999) Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. London and New York: Routledge.
External links
- Genres of popular music - Interactive relationships diagram
