Splice -- valued in 2021 at nearly USD $500 million after securing $55 million in funding - has named pluggnb the fastest-growing music genre on its platform in 2024.
The music creation platform has also confirmed that it clocked "nearly 350 million" downloads of its sound samples across all genres last year.
The company didn't say whether that marked growth or decline from 2023. Back in 2020, when pandemic lockdowns caused indoor activities - like music creation - to spike in popularity, Splice reported 1.1 million daily downloads, implying an annual pace of more than 400 million at the time.
In a new report co-authored with market research firm MIDiA and released on Wednesday (January 22), Splice said pluggnb - a blend of trap subgenre plugg and 1990s R&B - was the fastest-growing genre on its platform in 2024, as measured by downloads of pluggnb sample packs. Splice says it tracks "hundreds" of music genres on its platform.
However, while pluggnb, K-pop, and Jersey club may be the fastest-growing genres, they aren't the most popular ones, with none of the three making Splice's list of the top 10 genres by download.
The roughly 700,000 downloads of pluggnb sample packs amounts to a small fraction of the more than 48 million downloads of hip-hop sample packs. And the report isn't entirely convinced that pluggnb will be the next big thing in music.
"Pluggnb's rapid ascent may raise questions about its long-term viability and sustainability. It has benefited from trends in an environment - internet culture - where trends are often short-lived," the report said.
"However, pluggnb has laid a foundation strong enough to shape the sound of one of K-pop's biggest hits of 2024, ILLIT's Magnetic. The coming year is a critical window for continued growth."
"Splice is uniquely positioned to see the sounds that are driving music production globally."
Kakul Srivastava, Splice
Splice's list of top genres continues to be dominated by more established musical styles, including hip-hop and trap, which retained their places as the most popular and second most popular genres, respectively. Hip-hop sample packs were downloaded 48.7 million times, up 1.8% YoY, while trap saw 35.0 million downloads, up 3.1% YoY.
Notably, pop music - which had a banner year in 2024 - experienced a decline on Splice's platform, dropping from the third most popular genre in 2023 to fifth place in 2024.
"This is not to say that pop is on its way out; instead, it is evolving, with new regional styles coming to the fore," the report said. "East Asian offshoots like K-pop and Japanese city pop are growing fast, for example."
Splice says its download data can be used to predict coming trends in music in part because the platform "overindexes" among creators aged 16 to 24, according to MIDiA research, meaning that youth culture trends are easier to spot on the platform than elsewhere.
"The sounds that producers use to create today give us a window not only into the genres that will be big tomorrow but also early indications of entirely new genres that will emerge from the process of mixing samples across styles and cultures."
Mark Mulligan, MIDiA
"Splice is uniquely positioned to see the sounds that are driving music production globally. This report gives us a sense of how music producers are bending and blending genres in real time and just what genres and regions will define what we hear in 2025 and beyond," Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava said.
Mark Mulligan, Managing Director and Music Analyst at MIDiA, said there is "perhaps no more forward-looking cultural trend" than sample usage.
"The sounds that producers use to create today give us a window not only into the genres that will be big tomorrow but also early indications of entirely new genres that will emerge from the process of mixing samples across styles and cultures," he said. "The genres that stand out in this report also underline wider trends: the growing importance of scenes and fan remixing in shaping the sounds of the future."