How many music genres are there in the world today? No-one truly knows – and thanks to the internet, streaming services and accessible, affordable software, there’s been a massive upsurge in micro-genres, or niche subgenres, in recent decades.
Music is more fluid than it used to be in the heyday of jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, blues and pop. The evolution of music means that there’s now more crossover than ever – music has few geographical boundaries, as demonstrated by the global success of Latin music genres, but how do micro-genres emerge, and which are the ones you should know about?
Then and Now: Micro-Genres Through Time
You can date the origin of micro-genres to around the 1970s when people started coining words to describe highly specific subgenres of literature, film, art and song genres. In music, most examples cover the myriad subgenres of heavy metal and electronic music – though some were coined by record dealers and collectors as a way to pump up the value of certain, original records. Think of 70s phenomenon Northern soul, or freakbeat, garage punk and sunshine pop. Northern soul, with its roots in mod culture, was a dynamic, 360° culture of fashions, dance moves, vinyl obsession and more – not just a music style.
In the 90s, electronic and dance music producers created specialised descriptions of their music as a way to assert their individuality – so trance branched out into progressive trance, Goa trance, deep psytrance and hard trance. House, drum and bass and techno also spawned a large number of micro-genres.
Subgenres such as dubstep, reggaeton and hyperpop hit the mainstream. But because there were fewer ways of being exposed to and consuming music – radio and TV, largely, and then latterly MTV and YouTube – the more ‘micro’ differences between certain tracks would be filtered out. However, as Pitchfork points out, ‘now streaming services help to codify them into neverending playlists and see-what-sticks genre tags.’
Lo-fi, melodic dream-pop Chillwave was one of the first music micro-genres to formulate online – gaining mainstream recognition in early 2010 when it was picked up by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Journalist Emilie Friedlander identified chillwave as, ‘the internet electronic micro-genre that launched a hundred internet electronic micro-genres (think: vaporwave, witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, distroid, hard vapor).’
Pitchfork identified its appeal: ‘As America reeled from the collapse of entire sectors of the economy, young folks across the country burrowed into their bedrooms, fired up their laptops, and worked out their nostalgia with woozy new-wave synths, tape-warped samples, narcoleptic drum patterns, and hazy vocals hiding more than a smidgen of ennui beneath all that blissed-out reverb.’ It might have been relatively short-lived, but its sound ‘paved the way for everything from Tame Impala to lo-fi study beats.’
From DIY to Digital: The Role of Social Media in Propelling Micro-Genres
Theorist Mark Fisher wrote, as far back as 2004, that genre naming, ‘is not a neutral act of referring. Naming produces surplus value, something that wasn’t already there in the first place.’ He argued that a genre label has the potential to create an instant mythology for a sound. 90s jungle, grime, trap, UK garage – evocative names that conjure a feel for the music and where it’s come from.
He also argued that, ‘when there’s a threshold shift in sound, there has to be a new name.’ But who is in charge of naming micro-genres now? Increasingly, it’s not critics or music journalists, but the artists themselves. In a world of SoundCloud and Spotify, how do you stand out? By claiming your own micro-genre.
Glenn McDonald is a data analyst whose Every Noise at Once project tracks all genres of music he can identify on Spotify (as of August 2023, there are 6,275 listed). Micro-genres are driven online by like-minded people wanting to seek each other out and connect – plus, with a proliferation of platforms, forums and blogs, there’s far more discourse around music. As McDonald says, ‘we almost never make up genres, but we could. With great power comes great responsibility.’
How do specific micro-genres take off? Largely through word of mouth, tags and online communities.
Innovation or Fragmentation? Understanding the Impact of Micro-Genres on Music
Micro-genres can help to point you to eras within a genre, for example 60s garage rock, 80s glam metal and Modern metal (an umbrella term that incorporates further micro-genres melodic death metal, metalcore and cyber metal), or a regional scene – Norwegian, American or French, say – and then through specific styles. It’s arguable that micro-genres are where the true music aficionados hang out – and where music tastes become most tribal.
In terms of the industry itself, the fragmentation may mean that consumers are searching for smaller and smaller niches – but they may also be the groups that the industry depends upon most heavily. They’re the ones who go to gigs and buy the merchandise to support the artists they’re fans of – and identify themselves to other members of their ‘tribe’.
Whilst the proliferation of micro-genres can lead to innovation, as The Fader says, ‘The internet has also sped up the process of hype and backlash, shortening our collective attention spans and forcing us to move on to the next thing with little ceremony… these specialised styles [are] like snapshots of a zeitgeist that’s being constantly redefined.’
What Is an Example of a Micro Genre?
Electronic music is a world that’s ever-evolving, with new micro-genres continually emerging to shape both sounds and scenes. Stutter House, also known as Tremor, Tremolo or Flutter House, is based on a production effect: a pulsating or stuttering vocal, lead or synth pad. It’s a micro-genre that’s largely been driven by producer Fred… Again, who’s worked with Stormzy, Ed Sheeran and FKA Twigs, and played a Glastonbury set this year that critics and fans alike were raving about.
Bedroom Pop
The clue’s in the name with bedroom pop – as one of its stars, Maia, aka mxmtoon, who recorded her indie folk-pop in her parents’ guest room says, ‘Anyone can make music, and I think that is the ideology behind bedroom pop. It’s more of an idea, of a person sitting in a small space and using whatever resources you have to make songs that you’re proud of.’
The queen of bedroom pop? Surely Billie Eilish. Her early tracks epitomised bedroom pop: recorded at home and then uploaded to YouTube, Spotify, TikTok and SoundCloud, where she built a following. And when she and her brother Finneas accepted their first Grammy for ‘Bad Guy’, they really put the genre on the map. As Finneas said in his speech, ‘We just make music in a bedroom together. We still do that. This is for all of the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You’re going to get one of these.’
Check out Clairo, girl in red, Gus Dapperton, Cuco and beabadoobee for more bedroom pop – it’s a micro-genre that blends pop, indie, lo-fi and psychedelic.
Witch House
Witch house, sometimes referred to as drag, is an electronic music micro-genre with high-pitched keyboard effects, heavily layered basslines and trap-style drum loops. Its dark, dreamy sound also features pitched-down vocals and slowed-down tempos, dense reverb and creepy samples, a combination that Flavorwire described as, ‘generally, the feel of being trapped inside a haunted house – both exhilarating and terrifying.’
Its roots are in ambient, dark-tinged synth-pop, trance and drone metal, together with 1980s ethereal wave bands such as the Cocteau Twins. Aesthetically, as you’d expect, there are plenty of occult and gothic-inspired themes (think The Blair Witch Project and Twin Peaks.)
Names associated with witch house are Oneohtrix Point Never, Grouper, GFCF, Salem and Laurel Halo – the title was apparently coined by Travis Egedy, aka Pictureplane, as a joke in an interview for Pitchfork, but the term took off when it was picked up by other music journalists.
Witch house has gone on to influence everything from Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ to Kanye West’s ‘Yeezus’ and Billie Eilish’s dark aesthetic.
Dubstep
Dubstep is an EDM genre that originated in South London in the early 2000s, an offshoot of UK garage that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production with bass-heavy, rhythmic loops and glitchy sound effects. It also brought in elements of broken beat, grime and drum and bass.
Kick-start your dubstep journey with ‘I Can’t Stop’ by Flux Pavilion or Skrillex’s remix of ‘Cinema’ by Benny Benassi.
Other dubstep artists to check out include Bassnectar, Magnetic Man, Flux Pavilion, NERO and Chase & Status.
Dubstep has, in turn, spawned its own micro-genres, including glitchstep (heavier on the glitchy sounds), chillstep, deathstep (give it a listen if you’re a heavy metal or deathcore fan) and ganjastep (ideal if you enjoy original reggae, with beat buildups and heavy beat drops.) Brostep emerged in the early 2010s and uses a blend of hip hop’s rhythm and dubstep’s bass.
Vaporwave
Named as a nod to vaporware – nonexistent software or hardware that’s announced, and even advertised, whilst still in its design stage – vaporwave took new-age optimism, digital synthesis, Sims-inspired computer graphics and call centre hold music and mashed them all together with retro imagery taken from 80s and 90s pop culture.
Musically, it’s often based on samples of easy listening or lounge music – it’s been described as, ‘a nostalgic view of an imagined or actual past that never really existed.’ There’s a heavy use of synths and drum machines, plus vocoders to create a dream-like quality with slowed-down samples and pitch-shifted vocals.
What’s the difference between synthwave and vaporwave? The former is largely inspired by 80s culture, featuring elements from movies, TV shows and video games. Vaporwave is characterised by a more ironic approach, often using samples from corporate advertising and other bits of consumer culture.
Early pioneers were Daniel Lopatin (aka Chuck Person/Oneohtrix Point Never) – whose Eccojams Vol 1 featured chopped-up 80s tunes with loops and delay – and Far Side Virtual by James Ferraro, which showcased the genre’s love of computerised voices and chirpy elevator music. Esquire praised Floral Shoppe from Macintosh Plus for its ability to, ‘strike the delicate balance between being a parody of consumerism and actually really nice music to chill to.’
For more vaporwave, have a listen to Blank Banshee, George Glanton, Luxury Elite and Skylar Spence.
A World of Micro-Genres
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