The Music Subgenres Populating Streaming's Top Playlists

Brostep, Lilith, Etherpop, Crunk, Redneck, Metropopolis, and Pagode might sound strange for music genre classifications, but there’s a pretty good likelihood at least one of these subgenres is in your favorite streaming platform’s biggest playlists.

We've categorized thousands of Spotify genre tags into a handful of parent genres, finding artists that fit niche descriptors like Indie Poptimism or Moombahton. Applying this taxonomy to Spotify’s Hot Country playlist, which boasts around 5.6M followers, Moombahton, Ninja, Bmore, Redneck, and Brostep account for the biggest share of that playlist’s track distribution behind Country and Pop.

What exactly do some of those subgenres sound like? Well, Moombahton is a cross between House and Reggaeton, Redneck is really Country, and Brostep is in-your-face Dubstep.