Soundwave 2015 / Photo: Brett Schewitz

Here Are The Top 25 Metal Genres Ranked, According To Spotify

Spotify has been playing doctor with its music catalogue recently, poking, prodding and probing to draw conclusions about the way we humans listen to music.

Recently, they unveiled a musical map of the world, which boils down the music most listened-to by the inhabitants of major cities across the globe into over 100 unique and constantly evolving playlists. They also used that data to draw the conclusion that hip hop is the world’s most popular genre.

But despite hip hop’s apparent global supremacy, heavy metal music produces the most loyal fans. And after shouting “Eureka!” on that particular piece of science, the music doctors at Spotify have now probed deeper, to dissect the most popular subgenres within the metal genus.

Now we all know how anal metal fans can be when it comes to defining subgenres, and Spotify concedes that “some bands are associated with multiple genres to varying degrees”, but when it comes to methodology, they’ve kept things pretty simple: examining 91 different metal genres currently available on the streaming site, and then seeing which ones are getting listened to the most.

So drum roll (with shitloads of double kick) please: the top 5 metal genres, according to Spotify, are Alternative Metal at number 1, followed closely by Nu Metal, Hard Rock, Groove Metal and Rap Metal.

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