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To understand where music is going right now, start tuning into DMV rap, Mexican reggaeton, the new wave of indie and the electronic subgenres hard techno, hardtekk and schranz.
So advises SoundCloud’s newly released Music Intelligence Report, which assessed data generated by artists and listeners on the platform in 2025 to offer a comprehensive guide to the year’s key trends and to where music consumption, and creation, is going in 2026. Read the complete report here.
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Among these trends, the report finds that users are listening to a more diverse variety of genres, with listeners on the platform since 2019 “now spending 4% less time with their most-listened genre, instead consuming a broader range of music,” the report states.
SoundCloud’s social networking capabilities encourage this exploration, and “the effect is potent. When a listener plays a track from another user’s Liked By playlist, they’re more likely to play music outside their most-listened genre and they are over three times more likely to like, repost or comment on that track themselves.”
This melting pot of musical interest lends itself to artists too, with the report finding that hip-hop in particular is “rapidly evolving, exploring entirely new sonic palettes and lyrical styles.” Specifically, artists like Witty and Aeter have released EPs containing both indie folk and alternative trap.
At the beginning of 2024, genre-tagging technology “labeled 25% of these hip-hop-influenced indie uploads as folk, indie or rock,” the report states. “In the second half of 2025, that share was up to 34% on average.”
“We’re seeing hip-hop evolving in real time on the platform, pulling from electronic music and guitar-driven music to create whole new sounds and energies that expand the very notion of what something like hip-hop might be. That’s really exciting,” says Wyatt Marshall, SoundCloud’s senior director of music intelligence.
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“You get exposed to things through your social network that expand your musical horizons,” says Marshall. “It’s not just something that’s happening for listeners who are being turned on to a new favorite song. We’re actually seeing artists who are lovingly borrowing from genres outside of traditional lanes.” To this point, he also notes that 57% of Deftones listeners on SoundCloud have hip-hop as their most listened-to genre, “which is kind of amazing to see.”
Having successfully ID’d English rappers fakemink and Esdeekid as artists to watch in last year’s report, Wyatt advises listeners to remain on the lookout for more genre-blending from the region, given that the “UK underground rap scene really does have amorphous borders with things like electronic music and pulling from trends in U.S. hip-hop.”
All in, hip-hop is the most listened-to genre on SoundCloud in the U.S. in terms of total volume, with the biggest share of listening on the platform. SoundCloud’s top U.S. artists overall are YoungBoy Never Broke Again, followed by Rod Wave, Juice Wrld, Lil Durk, Future, Lil Baby and Playboi Carti.
Meanwhile, electronic music remains a SoundCloud juggernaut and is the platform’s fastest-growing genre. The report notes that electronic has accounted for a greater percentage of all listening for the third year running, referring to its year-over-year growth rate. In other words, electronic is increasing its share of overall listening faster than any other genre, even though its total listenership is smaller than hip-hop’s.
To wit, in 2020, roughly one in four tracks uploaded to SoundCloud was in an electronic genre. In 2025, it was more than one in three. Last year, the number of uploads hashtagged “#DJSET” also increased 39% year over year. Altogether, these uploads made electronic music SoundCloud’s fastest-growing genre in the U.S., where it accounted for “a greater percentage of all listening for the third year running.” Electronic was also SoundCloud’s most streamed genre in the U.K.
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The report cites the widely observed popularity surge of the high-BPM electronic subgenres hard techno, hardtekk and schranz and also points out that while these and a variety of UK-born electronic genres like garage and minimal tech are booming, so is the dubstep being made by a new generation of U.S. producers.
“After 2010s dominance, dubstep is surging again with U.S. audiences — streams on tracks tagged #dubstep increased 35% last year,” the report states. “Expect dubstep to continue its resurgence moving forward in tandem with a continued rise of UK minimal tech house and garage.” Top U.S. electronic acts on the platform include bass producers Tape B, GRiZ, Levity, Subtronics and Richard Finger, along with the sounds of John Summit.
“When you zoom out on [Soundcloud’s] social connectivity, you see hotbeds of activity that you can think about like scene,” Marshall says. “If everybody here is talking about one kind of thing, that’s where the conversation is, that’s where the artists are pushing the sound forward and borrowing from one another too. Those social networks expand outward, and it gives this experimental feel to everything, where people are feeding off the collective energy of the group.”
And as far as the bubbling up genres, SoundCloud data points to Turkish cloud rap, wave and Southeast Asia breakbeat as “scenes we see growing,” says Marshall. “These are three that we see as something to keep your eyes on as we go into 2026 and beyond.”
