This Dot Plot Will Help You Understand Almost All Genres of Music.
If you’re having a hard time distinguishing your pop Christmas ringtones from shimmering psychological awakenings, you’re in luck. This scatter plot will help you understand just about any genre of music, including some that you’ve probably never heard of.
According to its creator Glenn McDonald, the schedule is constantly evolving:
It is an ongoing effort to create an algorithmically generated scatter plot, adjusted for the readability of the music genre space, based on data tracked and analyzed by Spotify for 1,465 genres. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general the lower part is more organic, the upper one is more mechanical and electrical; the left one is more dense and atmospheric, the right one is sharper and more elastic.
To use it, just click on a genre to listen to a sound sample. Click on the little arrow next to the genre name and you get a complete map of typical performers. This is great for your own edification, but it is also handy when someone claims to like “all music except country”. (Oh really? So you really like vegan straight edge ?)