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Music genres by popularity

Hi,

It seems that Jazz had a 1.2% share in the UK during 2016. Classical had a 3.1%.

The list from 2016. These are the share of units sold.

Pop 34.9%
Rock 32.3%
MOR/Easy listening 6.9%
R&B 6.2%
Dance 5,9%
Classical 3.1%
Hip Hop 2.7%
Country 2.5%
Reggae 1.4%
Jazz 1.2%
Blues 1.2%
Folk 1.1%
World 0.2%
Children's 0.1%
Spoken word 0.1%
New Age 0.1%

https://www.statista.com/statistics...ic-album-unit-sales-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

What is "Pop" anyway? Given that "MOR/Easy Listening" and "R&B" get their own listing.... what actually comprises Pop?

Just for one example....Ed Sheeran - is he "MOR/Easy Listening" or "Pop" ?
 
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I've never really liked the 'Pop' (& to a lesser extent 'Rock') labels. Vs the others, which are meaningful, these are too vague. If I look at a dozen records bought over the weekend I suspect almost all of them are 'Pop' despite being pretty diverse.
 
I find the classification, sub-classification and sub-sub-classification of music fairly meaningless.
Love of music is a personal thing.
Hence I classify music as "good" (music I like)' and "crap" (music I don't like). Works for me.

Chris
 
i'm interested in what exactly constitutes "rock" these days? it seems like a leftover term or is the category really dad rock (beatles, who, led zep, etc.) when we are counting sales?
 
i'm interested in what exactly constitutes "rock" these days? it seems like a leftover term or is the category really dad rock (beatles, who, led zep, etc.) when we are counting sales?

Anything from the classic rock you list through all flavours of indie/alt to metal and thrash etc. They are all remarkably broad terms, e.g. R&B almost certainly covers everything from Gil Scott Heron, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Sly & The Family Stone etc through the whole of 70s funk, soul and disco to Beyoncé, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Thundercat etc. So much modern music lies between these genres I’d hate to sort a lot of it.
 
Anything from the classic rock you list through all flavours of indie/alt to metal and thrash etc. They are all remarkably broad terms, e.g. R&B almost certainly covers everything from Gil Scott Heron, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Sly & The Family Stone etc through the whole of 70s funk, soul and disco to Beyoncé, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Thundercat etc. So much modern music lies between these genres I’d hate to sort a lot of it.

Which makes those labels largely meaningless? I've got a fair bit of Gil Scott Heron's but have managed to resist Beyoncé. The Britpop/Indi boundaries is a grey one. Where does Punk fall in this - under the same Rock than includes the Stones...?
 
Which makes those labels largely meaningless? I've got a fair bit of Gil Scott Heron's but have managed to resist Beyoncé. The Britpop/Indi boundaries is a grey one. Where does Punk fall in this - under the same Rock than includes the Stones...?

Are you saying it's missing 'Quiet Storm'? :) I'd also suggest the demographic for the Sex Pistols is now the same as for The Rolling Stones for marketing purposes.

I'd like to see the raw data for this and that showing age distribution and listening format. Then we could get to some real surmising.

I suspect there are minority genres that have a far greater proportion of physical sales than some of the majority genres, I would also suspect those minority genres to have an older demographic. But I could be wrong. I can't find a link to the detailed Nielsen data for this - is it publically available?
 
What is "Pop" anyway? Given that "MOR/Easy Listening" and "R&B" get their own listing.... what actually comprises Pop?

Just for one example....Ed Sheeran - is he "MOR/Easy Listening" or "Pop" ?
I would imagine our Ed makes up 90% of the pop sales anyway :)
 
I’d argue they are needed in record shops as just having absolutely everything in one alphabetical area is a bit alienating if a customer is only interested in say ‘80s hair metal (which should be sorted within the rack by hair colour, obvs).

I worked in a indie record shop in the ‘80s and genres were good fun even in such a small shop. We regularly made them up. I’m definitely in the minority in happily spending a hour or two going through absolutely everything in a record shop, most people seem to have pretty narrow taste and only want to see their ‘thing’.
 
I think nowadays I possibly hate them even more with on line purchases leading to some data crunching likely to offer me up a recommendation for a bloody Queen album or something.
 
I think nowadays I possibly hate them even more with on line purchases leading to some data crunching likely to offer me up a recommendation for a bloody Queen album or something.

I do not understand genres either, never have really. Far too many crossover genres, in the 60's, 8 or so genres probably covered it all.

Bloss
 
Another four percenter here too.

Although I still like orchestral music, my interests have been gravitating more and more to chamber and also vocal music over the years.
This is also my experience. I do sometimes think I let it go too far, and miss quite a lot. I even researched the most suitable amp. for chamber music play back. Again, I did always prefer small group jazz to big bands, but less exclusively so.
 
What's truly mind-blowing is that Todd A is responsible for 99.47% of the unit sales in the 2% classical slice. Ya know, you might as well call that slice Wot Todd bought.

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Joe
 
i'm interested in what exactly constitutes "rock" these days? it seems like a leftover term or is the category really dad rock (beatles, who, led zep, etc.) when we are counting sales?

Rock - guitar music that isn't country. So it would include Fleet Foxes and Elvis, but not Brad Paisley. Country - rock with funny accents, fiddle, banjo and/or pedal steel, and lyrics about right wing lifestyle affirmation.
 


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