Popular music genres. | The Coffeehouse

androidi

Based on what you might hear from the radio or MTV you might think otherwise but here's latest data from a global ranking database where users tag the genres they like.

In order from most liked to least

rock, jazz, electro, punk, ambient, funk, house, (similar rankings: reggae, blues, metal, soul, techno, classical) ... (50+ genres) ... disco, r&b, ... on the other end of the list ... "pop", country, rap, "emo".

Looking at this I think this ranking might be biased by what is on tv/radio a lot? That kind of cancels it all except r&b & disco which end up being least liked genres of all? Kind of a shame I actually like some disco!

androidi

correction: global -> primarily euro/us.

Ion Todirel
buuu

In reply to androidi

#Jul 22nd, 2008 @ 10:55 AM

Last.fm?

androidi

In reply to Ion Todirel

#Jul 22nd, 2008 @ 11:24 AM

Nope. I just checked what last.fm provides and couldn't find a clear list but I gathered that last.fm users like pop , metal more than the users from the other ranking. They've also tagged alternative, indie but looking at definitions of those it seems they're a bit vague or a sub genre of something else.

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Did it occur to you that what's on TV/Radio a lot might be what's most popular, and that you're not really seeing bias, you're just seeing what's popular? You're also going to find a lot of regional variation, even within countries, so a global "what music is most popular" is essentially meaningless.

Alternative and indie are odd categories. Alternative would probably qualify as a subgenre of rock, but "indie" can be pretty much any genre of music. Most of what people term "indie" is pop or rock (or punk, since that's a top-level genre in the source you quote), but indie's really defined as being music that's not produced by one of the major record labels, so it doesn't qualify as a genre of music per se.