What is music’s best-selling genre?
Whether you love The Beatles and Charli XCX, I don’t care how open-minded you are about music, we’ve all had those moments when we meet someone new and they tell us their favourite genre, and we silently judge them for having bad taste. Really? The only music you listen to is noughties singer-songwriter ballads? If you insist. Regardless of how much you pride yourself on being willing to listen to whatever, there are some things that just won’t live up to your favourites or be worth your time.
It’s funny that we even ask people what genre of music they prefer these days, given the whole concept of it is slowly being smashed and pushed into obscurity. Genre used to be a very important concept because music wasn’t quite as accessible as it is today. People might have heard the occasional single here or there, but if they were buying an LP, and they would do so after much consideration, the first time they’d hear the whole thing was when they went home to play it. This meant that people had to know what genres they liked so they knew what kind of albums to buy.
These days, with a digital music library, people listen to music on their phones and make quick-fire decisions on whether or not it’s something they’re interested in continuing to listen to. It also means they don’t need to study the artists, look into what the album consists of anymore, sometimes not even bother with the album if one song off it doesn’t hit, and can instead either enjoy the record or turn it off if it’s not something they connect with.
That being said, record labels and music publications (not us) still insist on labelling different records. It makes it easier to describe the sound of something if you can loosely attach an established genre to it; you don’t need to do much more to give people an idea of what something may sound like. As such, while the concept is steadily fading out, it remains an integral part of the modern music industry.
Why are different genres important?
We can talk about why music is important, but doing so would welcome a series of novel ideas, and all of them, on some level, would be correct. I put it to you that one of the main reasons why music is so important is because of the connections it forms. Connections within ourselves, between others and with the artists who make music, as they can express feelings we struggle to express ourselves, and provide a voice to various subjects. For music to work, people need to connect with it, and for people to connect with it, music needs to be varied.
Having different genres means that you are diversifying the amount of music in the world, and this increases the chance of people feeling attached to it. As such, having more genres is always a good thing, and in the modern world, having it so that artists can move between them seamlessly is equally beneficial.
So, what is the best-selling genre in music?
Thus, all this begs the question: out of all the genres, which is the best-selling? Different decades have paved the way for different kinds of sounds. In the 1960s, people couldn’t get enough of rock, but in recent years, people have been leaning heavily towards hip-hop and pop music. Each sonic style has had its time baking in the sunlight, but which one has soaked up the most vitamin D (the D is for dollars) in the process?
While many people might think that rock music holds the top spot, it has been overtaken by R&B and hip-hop. These are the best-selling genres when you count streaming and digital music. If you were to only consider physical album sales, then rock is still the most popular. These stats clearly reflect the periods during which both these genres peaked, and the current crown holders have the advantage that their sound was established when music became more accessible.
