About Melodigging
Melodigging helps curious minds keep digging into the ever-evolving world of music genres: 5,661 genres to explore, around 1.5 million albums to discover, and a studio to learn how to make music in the genres you love.
Discovering music
Melodigging is a free encyclopedia of music genres. It maps 5,661 genres, from the biggest styles to tiny local scenes, and links them to around 1.5 million albums, their artists and labels. Each genre page gives you a description, its key albums, related genres and playlists, so you can go from a genre you love to one you had never heard of in a few clicks.
Melodigging was born as a tribute to Every Noise at Once, the genre map created by Glenn McDonald, which stopped being updated in 2023. Its genre list was our starting point. We keep enriching it with genre descriptions, the influences between genres, albums and new releases gathered from public music databases such as MusicBrainz and Spotify.
Each description starts from sources: encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, specialized music databases and articles that document the genre, along with its representative artists and albums. We write from these sources only, then check every claim against them before publishing. Many genres, especially the smallest scenes, are barely documented anywhere: for those, we prefer a short description that sticks to what we can verify over invented history. That is where your feedback helps most: if you know a scene, its history, its key artists or a source we missed, tell us and we will complete the description.
Each genre image starts from a real album cover or a real photo, which we turn into a mosaic, the visual signature of Melodigging, using advanced image editing models. The original composition is kept as it is: the mosaic changes the texture, not what the picture shows. We find that a single image like this conveys the feel of a genre better than a row of album covers squeezed side by side.
Start from a category (rock, electronic, jazz, hip hop…) and narrow down through its sub-categories, follow the related genres listed on any genre page, or let the Digging Quest pick genres for you based on what you already like. Every genre has a playlist so you can hear it straight away.
Melodigging does not host music itself. Genre playlists, albums and artists open in the streaming service of your choice: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, Tidal or Qobuz. We recommend Spotify, which has the widest range of genre playlists.
Your account
No. Every genre, album, artist and label page is free and open without signing in. A free account lets you mark genres as favorites, likes, dislikes, listen later or discovered, and keep track of your digging.
Yes, the Android app is available on Google Play. An iOS app is in development; in the meantime, you can add Melodigging to your home screen from Safari, where it works like an app.
Making music
It is a music studio that runs in your browser, with nothing to install. Interactive tutorials guide you step by step to create a track in a given genre from scratch: drums, bass, chords, melody and arrangement. No prior experience is needed.
The studio and the Lo-fi tutorial are free. A subscription at $3 per month unlocks every tutorial, all the instruments, drum kits and samples, and a new genre tutorial every week. Subscribers vote for the genre of the next tutorial.
Go to your profile page and click "Manage subscription": you can cancel at any time from the billing portal, and you keep access until the end of the period you already paid for.
About the project
Melodigging is an independent project built by music lovers in France. It has no record label or streaming service behind it, and recommendations are not sponsored.
Through studio subscriptions and donations. If Melodigging helped you find music you love, you can support it with a coffee on Buy Me a Coffee.
Use the "Give feedback" button at the bottom of every page, or write to [email protected]. We read every message, and corrections to genres, albums or artists are very welcome.
We only collect what is needed to run your account and improve the site, and we never sell your data. The details are in our legal page.
Still have a question?
Write to us at [email protected]
