Dance Music Genres Explained

Born in early-1980s Chicago, house is built on a steady four-to-the-floor kick, usually around 120 to 130 BPM. It is the broad foundation that most other dance genres branch off, and its sub-styles run from deep and soulful to tech and disco house.

From mid-1980s Detroit, techno is harder, more machine-driven and more hypnotic than house, built for long, dark, immersive sets. Tempos typically sit around 125 to 140 BPM.

A style defined less by tempo than by the squelch of the Roland TB-303. It sits at the root of UK rave culture and still feeds into house and techno today.

A melodic, euphoric strand that rose through the 1990s, built on long build-ups and soaring breakdowns, usually around 130 to 140 BPM. Sub-styles include progressive, uplifting and psytrance.

Oldskool hardcore sped up rave into breakbeat-driven music in the early 1990s. It split into jungle and then drum and bass, fast breakbeat music around 160 to 175 BPM built on deep sub-bass, and into happy hardcore on the more melodic side.

A swung, bass-led London sound from the late 1990s, blending house and two-step with vocals and MCs, usually around 130 BPM. It later fed into grime and UK bass music.

"EDM" is often used narrowly for the big-room, festival-facing dance-pop sound that broke worldwide in the 2010s, and more broadly as an umbrella for all electronic dance music. On this site we use it in the broad sense unless the context says otherwise.