Forums / Media / Music

What genres and trends did you notice the most? What genres and trends you liked the most and what did you hate the most?

Pop continued being pop, as did county and any other genre you'd expect to hear on the average radio station.
The amount of indy bands and soloists exploded as production costs decreased and new distribution avenues opened, but as usual they went mostly unnoticed by the mainstream.
Streaming services made buying music less special and shifted the focus from albums toward individual tracks (but great albums still persist)
Vine/Musically/Douyin/TikTok can briefly revived older music and sometimes re-purposed it (dancing memes)
Regardless of you opinion of these apps, they provide opportunities for kids to discover artists they probably wouldn't have otherwise.

Trap has secured a base, creeped up on sections of the mainstream and gained a sliver of grassroots internet popularity.

Mean while on the internet:
Dubstep's resurgence in the 00s was put down by Vapor Wave's birth in 2009-12 which branched off to create new sub-genres &fuel others, all of which found a surprisingly large audience via SoundCloud, YouTube and memes (Plastic love and the 9001 remixes is one story of many)
Video games (and some anime) stepped up and deliver soundtracks that will never get the recognition they deserve (Bastion, Battlefield, Nier, Ace Combat, Fallout, Halo etc).
Future Funk refined aspects of Vapor Wave to create a sub-genre as popular and creative as its parent.

Out of all of this, I find that the most curious trend is KPop which exploded worldwide in ~2009/10.

Emo rappers dropping like flies

It was the year of dance music.

For me: I found following trends:

Dubstep. And chillstep got popular in the early 10s.

Vaporwave and synthwave got tons of popularity.

Rap triplets became more common. Mumble rap also became more common and ridiculed.

Certain types of EDM surged popularity in mid-10s. The ones with long buildups and disappointing drops. Also, chopped and pitch-shifted vocals became common.

Electro swing (and even classic swing to an extent) also saw popularity.

Kevin Macleod and Alan Walker became stock music kings.

Pop music was the same as the 2000s

Rock music saw less of an impact in favor of mumble/SoundCloud rap. Artists like Swans, Tame Impala, King Gizzard, Thee Oh Sees, Vampire Weekend, Car Seat Headrest, Mac DeMarco, MGMT, Beach House, and Ariel Pink did pretty well though.

Most of the better rap I enjoyed this past decade came more from the internet than mainstream radio for sure. Can't recall a whole ton of rap that played on mainstream rap radio stations that I actually really enjoyed, but on the internet I found acts like Death Grips, Ghostemane, Denzel Curry, Tyler the Creator, $UICIDEBOY$, Aesop Rock (and the acts he associates with like Hail Mary Mallon and Malibu Ken), and others.

When it comes to Hot 100 songs, the start of the decade is when I started getting back into it since I was able to dig most of it. It hit it's peak in 2012 when Somebody I Used to Know took over the world and several other indie-alternative acts started appearing as well. That didn't last however, because in 2016 is when it all started going downhill for me. Sure there was ups and downs in the previous years, but by this time many of the music that I hated or thought was mediocre was dominating, particularly the rise of Trap and Soundcloud rap.

Here's my Top favorite songs from each year's Billboard year-end list to make this fair to each year:

2010: "Whataya Want from Me" by Adam Lambert
2011: "Yoü and I" by Lady Gaga
2012: "Somebody I Used to Know" by Gotye & Kimbra
2013: "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men
2014: "Come with Me Now" by Kongos
2015: "Ex's and Oh's" by Elle King
2016: "Stressed Out" By Twenty-One Pilots
2017: "Feel It Still" by Portugal. The Man
2018: "Natural" by Imagine Dragons
2019: "Circles" by Post Malone

If you want the real favorites of each year (including non-hits), here they are (and I had to make some painful cuts):

2010: "We Used to Wait" by Arcade Fire
2011: "Holdin' on to Black Metal" by My Morning Jacket
2012: "Boozophilia" by Low Cut Connie
2013: "Right Action" by Franz Ferdinand
2014: "Come with Me Now" by Kongos
2015: "Ship to Wreck" by Florence + the Machine
2016: "The Sound" by The 1975
2017: "Wall of Glass" by Liam Gallagher
2018: "Cassanova" by Rayland Baxter
2019: "Lo/Hi" by The Black Keys

First Half 2010s

- Autotune was heavy in a lot of pop songs

- Rock as the mainstream genre was gone

- Electronic music had a boom, with genres like dubstep emerging

- Group and genre scenes were more separated, artists didn't as frequently collaborate or talk about ones in other genres, and fans were more likely to only listen to their primary genre

- Starting to phase out physical copies of music for digital, usually through downloads and such

Second Half

- Rap emerged as the dominant genre

- Larger festivals have diversified more, rappers now headline Reading/Leeds

- Grime in the UK was revived with older veterans coming back and some new hit artists like Stormzy, more importantly, it's now mainstream unlike before

- Post-Punk scene is also revived in the UK with bands like Slaves, IDLES, Sleaford Mods

- Rock is going back to more underground and is more experimental and diverse in sound. A few outfits are emerging from Australia like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Tame Impala

- Memes create hit songs and vice-versa

- The internet is a or possibly THE new underground. Experimental and niche genres and bands like Vapourwave and Death Grips are created and have a scene mostly based on the web.

- Music is more globalised, the charts are looking more similar between western countries. Less hits are specifically a hit in a specific country

- Streaming, specifically Spotify becomes the go to way of listening to music