Timeline of the Most Popular Music Genres (1910-2019)

As part of their ongoing series of visualizations, PhD student and self-described data geek Data Is Beautiful has created an animated timeline of the most popular genres of music from 1910 through 2019.

In the early 1900s, opera was the most popular music category. A little more than a century later, Hip Hop/Rap dominated the charts. Various forms of rock, pop, soul, jazz and house music peaked in between.

Historical popularity is based on worldwide vinyl and CD records release frequencies for specific genre adjusted to recent years music charts. Numbers are relative to each other to reflect popularity change throughout the years (it’s not a percentage). I’ve tried to use sub-genres in most cases to present as much as possible diversity.