Distribution forms make you pick a subgenre from a list of thirty names nobody explains. Drop a track in and get the one to choose — plus a straight answer about what that subgenre actually sounds like.
The track is decoded in the browser. Three short windows are taken from across it, mixed to mono and sent as a small excerpt — never the whole file.
Tempo, drum pattern, bass behaviour, harmony and production get described first, then matched against the taxonomy. The pick has to be justified by something audible.
Every subgenre comes with a plain-English description, its usual tempo range and a few reference artists, so the dropdown stops being a guess.
The foundation of most dance music. A steady four-on-the-floor kick on every beat, an off-beat hi-hat "tss" between kicks, and a warm, looping, soulful groove. If it feels like a club at midnight and you can nod your head on every kick, it is house.
House with the lights turned down. Softer kicks, lush jazzy or gospel chords (lots of 7th and 9th chords), muffled basslines and a mellow, late-night, slightly melancholy mood. Less "hands up", more "eyes closed".
House rhythm crossed with techno's coldness. Stripped back, punchy and percussive — tight rolling basslines, minimal melody, chopped vocal snippets. Built for sound systems, not for singing along.
House that takes its time. Long, gradual builds where layers stack over several minutes toward a big melodic release. Widescreen, emotional, festival-sized. If your track has a slow 90-second build into a huge melodic drop, this is usually the honest pick.
Loud, aggressive, distorted house. Heavy, buzzing, detuned synth basslines that snarl rather than groove, and a hard-hitting drop. The dominant festival sound of roughly 2008–2014.
House tempo with dubstep-style bass design. The drop swaps melody for a growling, talking, heavily modulated bass while the four-on-the-floor kick keeps going underneath.
Main-stage festival EDM at its most maximal. Enormous simple lead melody, a huge build with a white-noise riser and a silent pause, then a drop that is mostly kick and a single blaring synth. Designed for 40,000 people jumping.
Bright, emotional, candy-coloured. Detuned "wobbling" chord stabs that bend in pitch, pitched-up vocal chops, trap-influenced drums with rattling hi-hats. Sounds hopeful and a bit nostalgic.
Repetitive, hypnotic, machine-driven. A relentless kick, metallic percussion, very little melody or vocal, and long hypnotic loops that evolve slowly through filters rather than through verses and choruses. Darker and more industrial than house.
Techno's drive with an actual emotional melody on top. Brooding minor-key arpeggios, cinematic pads, a hypnotic groove that feels more like a journey than a party. Very common for modern "moody but danceable" tracks.
Stripped to almost nothing and hypnotic because of it. Tiny clicking percussion, a barely-there bassline, huge amounts of space, and micro-changes that reveal themselves over minutes. Deliberately sparse.
Fast and punishing. Distorted, clipping kick drums that carry the whole track, screaming synth stabs, and tempos well past what a normal club plays. Aggression is the aesthetic.
Umbrella for hardstyle, hard house and hard trance. The signature is a "reverse bass" — the kick is followed by a pitched-down bass tone that sounds like it is bouncing backwards — plus euphoric or menacing leads.
Euphoric and melodic. Fast rolling 16th-note basslines, sweeping supersaw chords, a long emotional breakdown in the middle where the drums drop out entirely, then a soaring uplifting lead. Unmistakably "hands in the air".
Psychedelic trance. A galloping triplet bassline that never stops, squelchy acid-like leads, alien/organic textures and long trippy builds. Feels like a forest party rather than a nightclub.
Halftime and heavy. The drums feel half as fast as the tempo suggests (kick on 1, snare on 3), leaving enormous room for a modulated, growling, screaming bass to be the actual lead instrument.
Fast chopped breakbeats over a deep, slow-moving sub bassline. The drums sprint at ~174 BPM while the bass and melody move at half that pace, which is why it feels both frantic and heavy at once.
Drum & bass's rawer ancestor. Frenetic, heavily chopped and time-stretched breakbeats (usually the "Amen break"), reggae and dancehall basslines and vocal samples, and a rougher, more organic feel than modern DnB.
Dance music built on a syncopated, funky broken drum loop instead of a straight four-on-the-floor kick. The groove stumbles and swings rather than marching.
Skippy, swung, shuffling drums with a distinctive lurching two-step feel, soulful chopped vocals and a bouncy bassline. Sounds like house that has been knocked slightly off its grid, in a good way.
"Intelligent Dance Music" — electronic music made for headphones rather than dancefloors. Irregular, intricately programmed drums, odd time feels, unusual synthesis, and structures that refuse to repeat predictably.
Hip-hop tempo and swagger built out of digital errors used on purpose — stutters, buffer skips, CD-skip artifacts, bit-crushing and granular chops — over a heavy funk bassline. Funky and broken at the same time.
Hip-hop trap drums repurposed for festivals. Booming 808 sub kicks, rattling triplet and stuttering hi-hat rolls, and a big synth or vocal drop. Distinct from rap trap in that it is instrumental and drop-focused.
Slower electronic music built for listening rather than dancing. Grooves are present but relaxed, textures are rich, and the mood is atmospheric. The catch-all for "electronic, has a beat, but is not a club track".
Soft, warm, low-energy electronic music designed to decompress to. Gentle beats, mellow chords, no aggression and no big drop. Ibiza sunset rather than Ibiza nightclub.
Deliberately imperfect and cosy. Tape hiss, vinyl crackle, muffled dusty drums, jazzy sampled chords and a sleepy swung groove. Made to sit in the background while you study or work.
Atmosphere without rhythm. Long sustained tones, slow-moving pads and field recordings, usually with no drums and no clear beat at all. Meant to colour a space rather than command attention.
A loving recreation of 1980s film and video-game soundtracks. Gated reverb snares, analog-style arpeggios, neon-bright saw leads and a steady driving pulse. Nostalgic and cinematic by design.
Dance music with a live-band, disco or indie-rock heart. Funky electric bass, real-sounding drums, disco strings or guitar, often with an actual sung vocal and song structure.
Slow, heavy, cinematic and moody. Dusty hip-hop breakbeats at a crawling tempo, dubby bass, minor-key strings or Rhodes and often a haunting, breathy vocal. Rainy-city music.
Sustained, static and texture-first. A single tone or cluster held for a long time and slowly transformed, often harsh or unsettling. No beat, no melody, no resolution.