Ongoing History Daily: How many genres of music are there?

Let’s play a game. How many different genres of popular music can you name? In the early 50s, this was fairly easy. Country, folk, R&B, spiritual, classical, jazz, and a few others. But what about today after almost 70 years of fragmentation?

A guy named Glenn McDonald set out to map all the genres and sub-genres out there. How many do you think he found?  The answer: somewhere north of 2,500—and that number keeps growing. Along with all the usual suspects—metal, shoegaze, grunge, punk and so on—he got deeper into all sorts of micro-micro subtypes.

For example, have you ever heard of blackgaze? Or deep filthstep? Labratorio? Charred death? Skweee? This map he put together is fascinating.