In music history we have seen countless trends come and go. Certain subgenres and sounds defined entire decades and left a clear mark on the evolution of music. While trends still appear from time to time, it’s hard to define what our current dominant subgenres really are. As music consumption evolves, so does the commercial relevance of subgenres. More artists are blending influences to carve out unique identities, making the conscious use of diversity not just a creative choice, but an actual rising force. Especially within the metal genre there seems to be an upcoming movement of bands taking this approach. While there appears to be no single dominant sound leading the industry, this growing embrace of eclecticism could very well define the future of metal.
The number of platforms used to promote music used to be significantly smaller than it is now. Looking back at the 90s and 00s, music discovery was still largely driven by a few platforms, such as radio stations, TV shows and record stores, where people often encountered similar types of music. During these years, with the rise of the internet, music downloading came into existence and quickly gained popularity. Despite the many problems it caused within the industry, it did offer listeners an extra way to discover music. Although, it lacked a system in which music was being recommended to potential new listeners. People would encourage each other to listen to a certain artist, read about it, be tickled by seeing a band’s logo on a flyer, see a video clip on TV or come across an album in a record store. Whether they afterwards obtained their music the legal way or not, to some degree, people would discover the same range of artists, which created a more uniform experience for listeners.
Record labels added to this by consciously marketing new releases towards specific groups of fans. For instance, when you bought a new obscure metalcore album, it would often have a sticker on it saying something like ‘For fans of As I Lay Dying, Unearth & Walls of Jericho’. This being just a small example of how labels were able to promote new releases towards specific fan groups along with the successes of more established artists. The industry and music fans alike were very aware of the subgenres they were engaging with during these years, particularly in rock and metal. Since streaming platforms became the new standard for music consumption, record stores, radio stations, genre specific TV shows and even music downloads have become much less common. Our industry has lived in this reality for well over ten years and yet, the way music is recommended to us, is still continuously developing.
The way streaming platforms normally recommend music to listeners is fairly straightforward. Usually the genre that is attached to a song via its background information, also known as metadata, combined with common interests of other listeners, leads to recommendations that will likely fit a listener’s taste. These recommendations are solely based on information and so they are quickly aimed towards a specific subgenre and scene. This forms the absolute basis of how music is being introduced to us nowadays, but last year showed that more futuristic approaches are actually heading our way.
For instance, Spotify introduced the AI Playlist function, which allows the platform to automatically generate playlists based on user prompts. Similar to how ChatGPT processes text input, users can describe the kind of music they want to hear with phrases like “energetic, fast, modern metal” and Spotify will create a playlist tailored to that description. This approach enables listeners to define music in more personal terms, focusing on mood and energy rather than strictly adhering to subgenres. The AI selects songs that align with the desired vibe, making music discovery more intuitive and dynamic. Tools like these are still being optimized, but they are direct examples of how music recommendations are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The future will decide, but if AI tools like these grow in popularity, the consciousness of listeners about subgenres could inherently decrease. On the other hand, people would be able to discover music from artists that they otherwise would never have encountered. For artists with a more eclectic approach to music writing, this can actually open up new possibilities. For example, a diverse metal band could release a thrash metal oriented song, to release a nu-metal oriented song next to it. Both songs could potentially get their own deserved amount of attention and get their own different kinds of fanbases, since both songs will match different moods. Artists with a more narrow type of sound may miss the boat a bit on these possibilities, although they may have enough leverage to live on by the nostalgia of their dedicated subgenre.
Realistically speaking, subgenres as we know them will most likely never cease to exist, but with music promotion becoming increasingly reliant on algorithmic methods, the rise of entirely new, dominant metal subgenres may become less likely with each passing year. However, as much as we love certain subgenres, we are strong advocates for breaking these boundaries when artists take a more eclectic approach. In fact, we’re already starting to see this happen. Looking at the festival bills of major metal festivals, there seems to be an increasing trend of cross-genre acts, signaling a shift towards a more fluid and diverse musical landscape that thinks beyond subgenres. Acts like Perturbator, combining black metal with modern electronic inspired elements, Deathbyromy, presenting a never-seen-before combination of darkpop, trap and rock in a metal-esque outfit or Polyphia, blending hip-hop inspired rhythmic structures with fusion jazz, spanish guitar and progressive rock. Each of these artists have the potential to resonate with a much wider audience than a traditional subgenre-focussed band would have. Metal audiences are getting experienced with a wider range of sounds and thus the relevance of newfound subgenres seems to decrease. If streaming platforms evolve in harmony with the natural evolution of the metal genre, we may actually be looking at the beginning of a healthy industry again. Now we emphasize the word ‘beginning’, because many other things about the streaming industry still aren’t anywhere close to where they should be. Especially when we look at the unbalanced earning system for artists, but let’s keep that subject for another time.
Today’s state of the music industry has been described as ‘the algorithmic era’, but on a more optimistic note, we might also say that we’re moving beyond the days of subgenre tunnel vision. After all, rock music used to be a very eclectic genre in its beginning days. Subgenres weren’t that much of a thing and influences from many other genres used to form the diverse nature of the rock genre as a whole, eventually resulting in this diverse umbrella genre that we know as metal. While pushing boundaries has always been a core value of metal, today’s metal scene is becoming even more open to experimentation, allowing musicians to confidently push boundaries without being reduced to a single subgenre.
