Hype kept these genres alive longer than listener interest did.
Music taste has fractured. Instead of a single mainstream, listeners are forming micro-communities around niche scenes, regional sounds, and constant genre crossover.
The Splice x MIDiA Research Sounds of 2026 report quantifies the collapse: five genres that dominated the early 2020s—drill, jersey club, dream pop, tropical house, and lo-fi hip hop—all posted steep declines in 2025.
What killed them? And what’s rising from the wreckage?
1. Drill
Drill didn’t fade quietly. It was pushed out by legal crackdowns, artist deaths, and cultural exhaustion.
Mayor Eric Adams described drill as a “devilish bargain“, while Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez stated that drill rap videos were “causing young people to lose their lives.”
The genre’s biggest stars (Pop Smoke, King Von, and FBG Duck) all died within months of each other in 2020. Others like Kay Flock and Lil Durk faced serious legal battles. The pipeline of new drill simply dried up.
By 2025, even hip hop veterans were done with it. The LOX’s Jadakiss called drill “the worst rap genre of all time.”
What replaced it:
The void didn’t stay empty for long. Sexy drill searches exploded 569%, making it the fastest-growing genre search on Splice. Cash Cobain popularized the style, keeping drill’s core sound, but swapping violence for sensuality.
Artists like Ice Spice and Jordan Adetunji (“KEHLANI”) rode the wave to global audiences. Spotify’s Loud & Clear report noted a 1,460% increase in UK sexy drill streams in 2024 alone.
Meanwhile, boom bap searches grew 50%, with New York leading the throwback movement. The city saw over 60,000 more boom bap downloads than the previous year. The Y2K-inspired sample pack “Reconnecting – Hanz x Sem0r Vol. 5” became the top download among hip hop creators.
2. Jersey Club
TikTok giveth, and TikTok taketh away.
Jersey club spent years underground before viral moments launched it into the mainstream. From 2020 onwards, Cookiee Kawaii’s “Vibe (If I Back It Up)” and Drake’s “Currents” broke through. And Lil Uzi Vert’s “Just Wanna Rock” dominated 2023. The genre grew 258% in New York in 2024 as dance challenges flooded feeds.
Unlike house music’s evolution into regional subgenres, jersey club stayed frozen in place. The same bouncy 130-140 BPM grooves, the same staccato chops, the same triplet kicks. When everything sounds identical, listeners move on.
What replaced it:
House music surged from the 5th most downloaded genre in 2023 to 2nd in 2025. The engine behind that rise? Afro house, which grew 778% to 6.7 million downloads and earned Splice’s “Sound of the Year” title.
What started as kwaito-influenced house in 1990s South Africa (traditional percussion with deep house sounds) exploded globally. Built by the likes of Vinny Da Vinci, Christos, and Black Coffee and pushed forward by artists like AMÉMÉ and ISS 814, Afro house offers something jersey club couldn’t: cultural depth and organic warmth.
The Splice x MIDiA numbers back it up:
- In New York, 92% of house music’s growth came from just two subgenres: Afro house and melodic house
- The “Vocal Afro House” sample pack alone pulled 1.4 million downloads, or 20% of all Afro house downloads in 2025
- Speed garage surged 625% to over 3 million downloads, driven by Sammy Virji’s work with Skrillex, Fred again.., and Four Tet
3. Dream Pop
Dream pop’s collapse came fast. After triple-digit growth in 2024, downloads dropped 25% in 2025. The genre (known for atmospheric textures and breathy vocals) simply peaked, ran out of creative steam, then passed the baton.
Part of the problem was fuzzy boundaries. Dream pop became a catch-all label. Slowcore acts, neo-psych bands, and shoegaze artists all got lumped together regardless of context. When a genre means everything, it starts meaning nothing.
Another issue was polish. Dream pop’s layered, reverb-heavy production felt out of step with what listeners wanted in 2025: rawness, imperfection, human touch.
What replaced it:
Bedroom pop exploded 297% to 1.6 million downloads, becoming pop’s biggest growth story.
The genre puts DIY realness over studio polish. Artists like Puma Blue, beabadoobee, and Billie Eilish built careers recording in actual bedrooms with minimal equipment. Clairo’s “Pretty Girl,” filmed on a laptop webcam and made in 30 minutes, has garnered over 100 million views.
The generational shift toward realness over polish showed up in the charts too. Lola Young’s “Messy” hit UK Number 1 in early 2025, a Gen Z anthem built on bedroom pop’s approach to unfiltered truth.
Along with it, bedroom pop’s rise also lifted root genres like indie rock (+84%), shoegaze (+60%), and indie (+40%). This shows that as dream pop’s synthetic shimmer fades, organic, guitar-led sounds are thriving.
4. Tropical House
Tropical house had a fatal flaw: it wasn’t actually from anywhere.
The genre conjured images of beaches and vacations through pan flutes and marimba samples, but it wasn’t tied to any real culture or community. It was “tropical” in name only—a sound designed for mass appeal and background listening. That worked when audiences wanted easy, inoffensive vibes. It didn’t survive once listeners started demanding realness.
By 2025, house music was re-centering around culturally-specific subgenres. Tropical house simply didn’t have one to fall back on.
What replaced it:
Searches for French house and Latin house rose 102% and 87% respectively, driven by renewed interest in styles shaped by Parisian disco culture and Latin rhythmic traditions. These genres feel specific, historical, and lived-in in ways tropical house never did.
Afro house led the shift, but the pattern was global. Istanbul became Splice’s fastest-growing major city, fueled largely by regionally rooted house styles. Along with Tel Aviv and Dubai, it now forms the largest Afro house market outside Los Angeles and New York. It’s evidence that culturally anchored sounds travel further than aesthetic-only genres ever could.
5. Lo-Fi Hip Hop
Lo-fi hip hop was killed by the same forces that made it popular: algorithms and easy access.
The genre thrived on YouTube channels like ChilledCow (now Lofi Girl) and Chillhop Music, which ran 24/7 livestreams of “beats to relax/study to.” But as the genre went commercial, those channels dropped sample-based production (the soulful, J Dilla-influenced sound that gave lo-fi its heart) in favor of safer, more uniform beats.
The genre became built for background listening rather than active enjoyment. Producers chased playlist placement instead of artistic expression. The result was sonic wallpaper—pleasant enough, but empty.
AI-generated artwork also sped up the decline. The hand-drawn anime images that defined early lo-fi gave way to polished, generic AI art. The dusty, soulful vibe that fans fell in love with got scrubbed clean.
What replaced it:
Listeners craving real hip hop production turned to boom bap, which saw 50% growth in searches, according to the Splice report. The vintage, sample-heavy sound—built by artists like J Dilla and Nujabes—offers what algorithmic lo-fi lost: human feel and creative purpose.
Soul music also surged. The “Vintage Vibes 3” sample pack hit 1.2 million downloads. “Vintage Vibes 4” added another 800,000. The pattern is consistent. When sounds get tweaked for algorithms, playlists, and mass appeal, they lose the human qualities that made them special.
What replaces them shares a common thread: realness, cultural roots, and organic warmth.