Analyzing Music Genre Popularity

Abstract

Music and the culture surrounding it are in perpetual states of change. With such a wide variety of genres continuously overtaking each other in popularity, there is a constant and inherent questioning of which genre is the most popular at any given time. Although billboards help give an overall understanding of what songs are presently dominating, they may not provide a full picture of what all people listen to daily , only scratching the surface. Social media in particular has dramatically increased the debates over music genre popularity and is a tool that can be used to gain insight on what forms of music people listen to in their daily lives that may not appear on the charts. The research in this paper focuses on utilizing social media as such a tool to perform analysis on what genres dominate the music industry today, both in an attempt to validate or find flaws in the billboards as well as understand what affects the popularity of genres as it stands. The analysis performed found both expected as well as contradicting results that answer several questions regarding the popularity of music genres today.