I tried to hear the shift in mainstream music—
then I chose to measure and visualize it instead.
Some genres are notably wiped out over time, like Rock/alt, which accounted for 18.7% of the top hits in 2003; by 2010, that number had dropped to 0.93%.
Unsurprisingly, Pop’s proven it’s here to stay, remaining massively relevant in the mainstream. In 2000, pop music accounted for 52.7% of all top hits and went back and forth with Hip-Hop/Rap over the years, but never dropped below its all-time low of 30.77% in 2005.
I analyzed a dataset of the Top Spotify Tracks from 2000-2019, which aggregates the top 2000 Spotify songs over almost 20 years. The original dataset included 18 columns of key details and characteristics associated with the song, like key, energy, and even danceability. While these factors seem like an interesting follow-up analysis, I opted to filter my data to the core columns: Artist, Year, Song Title, Popularity Score (out of 89), and Genre (grouped into 10 broad categories).
My next challenge was to streamline each genre input, which ranged from 20+ variations in the raw dataset, into 10 containers or groups by duplicating the rows and columns and filtering them. The groups I created were Hip-hop/rap, Pop, R&B/soul, Rock/alt, EDM/Dance, Country, Latin, Indie/Folk, K-Pop/Global, Other.
The result was clear: over 20 years, the top charts on Spotify have veered away from a concentrated genre mix split between Pop and Hip-hop/Rap towards a landscape in 2019 where Pop and Hip-hop/Rap still dominate, but new genres like Latin/Reggaeton and EDM/Dance not only emerge but thrive.
This first chart displays the genre share within each year from 2000 to 2019 (each year totals 100%).
In 2000, the top genres were pop at 52.7% and hip-hop/rap at 28.38%. Next, Rock/alt at 10.8%, R&B/Soul at 4.05%, K-pop/global at 1.35%, and the last 1% consists of the remaining genres.
In 2000, the top genres were pop at 52.7% and hip-hop/rap at 28.38%. Next, Rock/alt at 10.8%, R&B/Soul at 4.05%, K-pop/global at 1.35%, and the last 1% consists of the remaining genres.
In 2019, pop decreased to 48.31%, hip-hop/rap grew to 42.7%, and EDM/dance remained at 1.12%. Latin/reggaeton emerged as a genre, accounting for 6.74% of the top hits in 2019, while the remaining genres accounted for 1.12%.
It’s already clear the waves Latin/Reggaeton have made in recent years, yet it’s now visible that these waves are only growing upon analyzing the percentage-point change of the genres from 2000 to 2019.
The percentage-point change is calculated by dividing the number of songs labeled with each genre by the total number of songs in that year to get the share for 2000 and 2019. Next, I subtracted the shares to get the percentage-point change. This measure avoids exaggerating data, making results comparable across genres and allowing us to see which have truly gained or lost space in Spotify streams over time. Hip-Hop/rap had the most significant positive percent-point change at 14.53%, and the newly emerged Latin/Reggaeton comes in just behind it at 6.74%.
This measure is essential because it provides a nuanced perspective on the overall change and its rate over 20 years, a crucial factor to consider when examining a time span so vast and questioning its greater impacts.
The first being Pop music’s percentage point change of -5%, which shows it stayed either the most or the second-most listened-to genre every year. This is important as one can misinterpret the continued majority percentage of pop music as continued growth; however, that is not the case.
In 2000, the “sound of mainstream” resembled a familiar pie chart: Pop at the core, Hip-hop/rap on its heels, and Rock/Alt holding the remaining space, with every other genre living on the margins. In 2019, that map hasn’t merely shifted but been completely redrawn. Rock/Alt has become relatively wiped from the mainstream, Hip-hop/Rap has caught up to Pop’s heels, and Latin music breaks out of “other” status into a true player in today’s mainstream composition.