List of popular music genres
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training. It stands in contrast to both art music like Western classical music or Indian classical music, and traditional or "folk" music.
A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions.
This is a list of the commercially relevant modern popular music genres, with applicable styles classified using AllMusic genre categorization.Exclusions
Genres or styles that are not contemporary or commercially marketed in substantial numbers have been excluded from this list, as follows:
- Music written for the score of a play, musicals, or similar: Filmi, incidental music, video game music, music hall songs and showtunes
- Ballroom dance music: pasodoble, cha cha cha and others
- Religious music: Gregorian chant, spirituals, hymns and similar
- Occasional music: Military music, marches, national anthems and related compositions
- 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.
By region
African
Asian
- Fijiri
- Khaliji
- Liwa
- Sawt
East Asian
South Asian
Southeast Asian
Avant-garde
- Experimental
- Noise
- *Harsh Noise
- *Harsh noise wall
- Outsider music
- Lo-fi
- Musique concrète
- Electroacoustic
Blues
Caribbean and Caribbean-influenced
- Comedy
- Comedy rock
- Novelty
- Parody
Country
Easy listening
Electronic
House
Flamenco
Folk
Hip hop
Jazz
Latin
Pop
R&B and soul
Rock
Heavy metal
Punk rock
