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List of music genres and styles

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
14 min read
Source updated September 17, 2026

This is a list of music genres and styles. Music can be described in terms of many genres and styles. Classifications are often arbitrary, and may be disputed and closely related forms often overlap. Larger genres and styles comprise more specific sub-categories.

01Classical

03Regional

African

Antarctica

Asian

Central Asian
East Asian

Chinese:

Hong Kong, China:

Taiwanese:

Japanese:

Korean:

South Asian

Sri Lankan:

Southeast Asian

Malaysian:

Indonesian:

Thai:

Filipino:

Lao:

Vietnamese:

Middle Eastern

Australasia & Oceania

European

Balkan States
Baltic States
Caucasus
Central European States
Nordic/Scandinavian States
Slavic States
Western European

Latin & South American

Brazilian
Caribbean
Hispanic

North American

04Religious

05Traditional folk

06Other

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.

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “List of music genres and styles”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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Lists of music genres

This is a list of lists of music genres.