Ongoing History Daily: A selection of weird musical genres

December 6, 2024 Alan Cross 0 Comments 0 min read

One of the cool things about streaming music services is all the data that can be harvested from the people who use them.

For example, Spotify is always trying to categorize all the music on their servers so the algorithms have something to work with. This has resulted in the explosion of names for all the new genres that continue to emerge. Here are some examples of official Spotify genre designations.

“Drone folk” is droney music made with traditional folk instruments like banjos, acoustic guitars and even hurdy-gurdies. “Black sludge” is slow, slow black metal. “Beatdown” is a type of extra-aggressive hardcore punk. Then we have gauze-pop, new weird America and even “unblack metal.”

It’s cool, but who thinks of this stuff?

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 39522 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross