In a world where music is as diverse as the people who listen to it, finding your way through the vast expanse of genres can feel like an overwhelming task. With so many musical styles emerging from every corner of the globe, how can one possibly navigate through it all? Enter Everynoise, a unique platform designed to guide music lovers through the ever-evolving landscape of musical genres. This website offers an incredible, almost endless experience, letting users explore over 1,530 distinct genres sourced from Spotify’s vast database of songs. Whether you’re a music aficionado or simply curious about different styles, Everynoise provides an interactive way to discover and categorize the world’s music.
In this article, we’ll dive into the concept of Everynoise, its features, its creator, and how it has reshaped the way we explore music in the digital age.
What is Everynoise?
At its core, Everynoise is a music discovery tool that offers an extensive map of musical genres. Created by Glenn McDonald, the platform displays a scatter-plot of genres drawn from Spotify’s data, allowing users to explore an incredibly wide range of music. What makes Everynoise so captivating is the way it presents genres: each is arranged visually in a way that reflects its relationship to others. Popular genres like pop, rock, and hip-hop appear alongside niche and obscure genres, such as vaporwave, space ambient, or blackened deathcore. This broad categorization lets users jump from one genre to another in a matter of clicks.
Everynoise is not just a list; it’s a complex ecosystem where music genres are plotted based on their sonic characteristics, and users can click on any genre to hear an audio sample representative of that style. The website is built on data-driven insights provided by Spotify’s Echo Nest, a music intelligence company that was acquired by Spotify in 2014.
The Origins of Everynoise: Glenn McDonald and the Echo Nest
The genius behind Everynoise, Glenn McDonald, worked at Echo Nest, a company that specialized in analyzing music data. Echo Nest was known for its ability to provide deep insights into music by looking at things like song tempo, structure, and instrumentation, as well as cultural and contextual elements like popularity or listener engagement. After Spotify acquired Echo Nest, McDonald continued to develop new ways to categorize and explore music, eventually leading to the creation of Everynoise.
McDonald’s goal was not just to make a tool for discovering new music but to create a taxonomy—a way to map and categorize the endless variations of music that exist in the world. Everynoise is an ongoing project, continuously updating as new music genres emerge and older ones evolve. With millions of songs at his disposal, McDonald has used data science to build a system that paints an intricate picture of the global music landscape.
How Everynoise Works: A Deep Dive into Its Features
Everynoise operates on a simple but powerful premise: it organizes music based on similarities between genres and songs. When you visit the site, you’ll see a large, dynamic scatter-plot filled with names of musical genres. Genres closer to each other on the plot share more sonic characteristics, while those farther apart are more distinct. Clicking on any genre will give you a sample audio clip representative of that style, allowing you to immediately experience its sound.
1. Genre Exploration
The sheer breadth of genres featured on Everynoise is staggering. With over 1,530 genres, you can explore everything from mainstream genres like pop and indie rock to highly niche categories such as German shoegaze or Korean indie pop. The site also includes genres that are still developing or are unique to certain localities or subcultures. By clicking on each genre, users can dive into a musical sample, getting an authentic feel for what that genre sounds like.
2. Genre Relationships
One of Everynoise’s standout features is its ability to show the relationships between genres. For example, clicking on a genre like EDM will show you related genres, such as trance, progressive house, or future bass. This interconnectedness allows for a more holistic understanding of how music genres influence one another, evolve, and adapt over time. It’s a visual map that shows how fluid and dynamic the world of music can be.
3. Discover New Music
For avid music fans, discovering new music is one of life’s great joys, and Everynoise makes this easy. The platform is built on Spotify’s enormous catalog, so every time you click on a genre, you’re linked to songs directly from Spotify’s library. You can jump into a new genre, explore artists you’ve never heard of, and even create your playlists from the songs you find. Everynoise also allows users to explore the top songs in each genre, giving a snapshot of what’s currently trending within a specific category.
Everynoise and the Rise of Microgenres
One of the most fascinating aspects of Everynoise is its inclusion of microgenres. As the internet has expanded the reach of music, niche genres have sprung up at an unprecedented rate. Microgenres are smaller, highly specialized categories of music that may only appeal to a dedicated community of listeners. Examples of microgenres include witch house, glitch hop, and cloud rap. These genres often defy easy classification and blur the lines between existing genres.
What makes microgenres particularly interesting is that they often form online, where communities of fans and musicians create, share, and discuss new music in real-time. As new genres gain traction within online subcultures, they eventually make their way onto platforms like Spotify, where they get enough recognition to appear on Everynoise. By including these microgenres, Everynoise captures the evolving and experimental nature of music in the digital age.
The Cultural Impact of Everynoise
Beyond being a music discovery tool, Everynoise offers a lens into how musical tastes evolve and change over time. The platform reflects global listening habits, showing how certain genres become popular in particular regions or cultural contexts. For instance, genres like Latin pop or Afrobeats have seen a surge in global popularity, and Everynoise allows users to explore these trends in real-time.
The site also challenges our perceptions of what defines a genre. Traditional genre labels like rock or jazz are expanded into dozens of subgenres, each with its own distinct flavor. By exploring Everynoise, users can break free from their usual listening habits and discover new styles they may have never considered before. This ability to introduce people to new and diverse music is one of Everynoise’s most important cultural contributions.
Everynoise as a Tool for Music Professionals
While casual listeners use Everynoise to discover new music, the platform is also a valuable tool for music professionals. Musicians, producers, and record labels can use the site to explore emerging genres, track trends, and discover artists who are pushing the boundaries of music. The platform can serve as a source of inspiration for musicians looking to innovate or blend different styles, while record labels can use it to identify the next big trend in music.
Furthermore, radio DJs, playlist curators, and music journalists can use Everynoise as a resource to find music that fits specific niches or to track the rise of underground genres. By providing a clear, data-driven picture of the music landscape, Everynoise empowers industry professionals to make informed decisions based on actual listening trends and cultural shifts.
The Future of Everynoise and Music Discovery
As music continues to evolve, platforms like Everynoise will become increasingly important in helping people navigate the changing landscape. With new genres and subgenres constantly emerging, the need for tools that categorize and organize music will only grow. Glenn McDonald’s Everynoise project has already laid the foundation for this, and it’s likely that we’ll see further refinements to the platform in the future.
In addition to improving the genre map, future iterations of Everynoise could incorporate more personalized features, allowing users to create customized music maps based on their preferences. There’s also the potential for expanded integration with streaming services like Spotify, where users can directly add music they discover on Everynoise to their playlists.
Conclusion
Everynoise is more than just a scatter-plot of music genres—it’s a gateway into the rich, diverse, and endlessly fascinating world of music. Whether you’re a casual listener looking to broaden your musical horizons or a professional seeking the next big trend, Everynoise offers a wealth of information and an immersive listening experience.
Through its unique visual layout and data-driven approach, Everynoise reshapes the way we discover, categorize, and think about music. From mainstream pop to underground microgenres, the platform provides a snapshot of the global music landscape, helping users explore the full spectrum of sounds that define our culture today.
