What Are The Areas Of The Music Industry?

Music is broadly categorised into the following genres: classical music, gospel, jazz, Latin American, blues, rhythm and blues, funk, rock, pop, country music, electronic music, melodic music, ska, reggae, dub and other related forms (clubbed into one genre), hip hop, rap and rapcore (clubbed into one category) and contemporary African music. Funk is further sub-classified into a genre called funktronica. Electronic music is also a broad genre of music that has been sub-divided further into three categories, namely electro/electro funk, electronic dance music and electronica.

Classical music is usually referred only to Western music, but its country of origin is specified if the term classical music is used in a non-Western context, such as India, Chinese or Persian classical music.

Though classifying music into genres helps music lovers to find their favourite musicians and delve deeper into the history of music, the classification of music into genres has been criticised as it is a subjective process and depends of the individual preferences of music lovers. There is also a chance of a piece of music overlapping into more than genre. It is also often said that genres have been created purely for the sake of the convenience of marketing people who hope to commercialise music.