Microgenre

A microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. Historically, writers seeking to define a new style of music, by linking together a group of seemingly unrelated artists, labelled a new microgenre using an appropriate protologism of their choosing. Additionally, genres are sometimes retroactively created by record dealers and collectors as a way to increase the monetary value of certain records. Some of the earliest examples are Northern soul, freakbeat, garage punk, and sunshine pop.

By the early 2010s, most microgenres would be linked and defined through various outlets on the Internet, usually as part of generating popularity and hype for a newly perceived trend. Examples of these include chillwave, witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, vaporwave, and cloud rap.

1970s–1990s

Microgenres are usually labelled by writers seeking to define a new style of music (by linking together a group of unrelated artists). For example, when Lenny Kaye invoked the phrase "garage-punk" in liner notes for the 1971 compilation Nuggets, it effectively created a style of rock music that, until then, was nameless and lingering in obscurity. The process of recognition for "power pop" was similarly formulated by a circle of rock writers who advocated their own annotated history of the genre. Music journalist Simon Reynolds referenced the "genre-as-retroactive-fiction" to as early as "Northern soul" and "garage punk", both coined in the early 1970s, and later followed by "freakbeat" and "sunshine pop". These kinds of genres are also sometimes designed by record dealers and collectors to increase the monetary value of the original records.

Successful attempts that resulted in widespread usage include "post-rock" (Reynolds) and "hauntology" (Mark Fisher). In the mid 1990s, Melody Maker journalists went so far as to make up fictional bands to justify the existence of an updated New Romantic scene they dubbed "Romantic Modernism". That same decade, there was a trend of electronic and dance music producers who created specialized descriptions of their music as a way to assert their individuality. In the instance of trance music, this desire led to "progressive trance", "Goa trance", "deep psytrance", and "hard trance". House, drum-n-bass, dubstep and techno also contain a large number of microgenres.

Since the 1990s, Metal music, especially from Extreme Metal, spawned a lot of different styles by using expressions like War Metal, Drone Metal, Depressive Black Metal, Djent for the music. Many of these highly specialized subgenres are hard to distinguish for non-metal listners. See Heavy metal genres for an overview of all metal genres.

21st century

The 21st century "microgenre explosion" was partly a consequence of "software advances, faster internet connections, and the globalized proliferation of music". By the early 2010s, most microgenres would be linked and defined through various outlets on the Internet. Examples of these include chillwave, witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, vaporwave, and cloud rap. Each of them, according to Vice writer Ezra Marcus, were "music scenes [created] out of thin air". Pitchfork's Jonny Coleman commented: "The line between a real genre that sounds fake and a fake genre that could be real is as thin as ever, if existent at all. This is the uncanny genre valley that publicists-cum-neologicians live in and for." PopMatters' Thomas Britt argued that the "staggering number of niches created by writers and commenters to 'distinguish' musical acts is ultimately binding. If a band plays along and tailors itself to a category, then its fortunes are likely tied to the shelf life of that category."

In 2010, The Atlantic's Llewellyn Hinkes Johns referenced the succession of chillwave, glo-fi, and hypnagogic pop as a "prime example" of a cycle involving the invention of a new category that is quickly and "brazenly denounced, sometimes in the same article". Chillwave—termed sarcastically in a 2009 blog post—was one of the first music genres to formulate online. The term did not gain mainstream currency until early 2010, when it was the subject of articles by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Grantland's Dave Schilling describes the label's designation as a pivotal moment that "revealed how arbitrary and meaningless labels like that really are. It wasn't a scene. It was a parody of a scene, both a defining moment for the music blogosphere and the last gasp."

List of microgenres

See also: List of microgenres

Microgenre	Year of coinage
Alternative R&B	Does not appear
Chillwave	2009
Cloud rap	Does not appear
Deep Internet	Does not appear
Distroid	Does not appear
Hardvapour	Does not appear
Hipster hop	Does not appear
Mumble rap	2016
Noisegrind	Does not appear
Seapunk	2011
Shibuya-kei	c. 1991
Shitgaze	Does not appear
Slam death metal	Does not appear
Vaporwave	2011
Witch house	2009

See also

• Avant-prog
• Bedroom pop
• Cringe pop
• Cuddlecore
• Dark music
• Dream-beat
• Electroclash
• Folktronica
• Freak folk
• Indietronica
• List of electronic music genres
• Lowercase
• Minimal wave
• Neon pop-punk
• New pop
• New wave of new wave
• New Weird America
• Nightcore
• Outsider music
• Post-progressive
• Proto-prog
• Proto-punk
• Slime punk
• Sophisti-pop
• Yacht rock
• Wonky pop
• Zeuhl

Lists of sub-subgenres

• Heavy metal genres
• Industrial music genres
• Punk rock genres