Andalusian classical music
Indian classical music
Korean court music
Persian classical music
Western classical music
Early music
Crossover music
Danger music
Drone music
Electroacoustic
Industrial music
Instrumental
Lo-fi
Musical improvisation
Musique concrète
Noise
Outsider music
PC Music
Progressive music
Psychedelic music
Underground music
Nunatak (band)
Sikh music
Buddhist music
Christian music
Contemporary Christian music
Islamic music
Modern pagan music
Music of ancient Greece
New-age music
Shamanic music
Christmas music Fado Fingerstyle guitar Huayno Pastorale Polka Son mexicano Música criolla
American patriotic music
Ballroom dance
Vogue (dance)
Children's music
Dance music
Slow dance
Drug use in 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
Incidental music
Bedroom production
Multi-instrumentalist
Martial industrial
PC Music
Hyperpop
Regional and national music with no significant commercial impact abroad, except when it is a version of an international genre, such as: , 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.
traditional 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.
Genealogy of musical genres
This list is split into four separate pages:
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.
(1996) Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Frith, Simon
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.