9 music trends to look out for in 2025

We live in exciting times for the music industry. New technologies, shifting social habits, and global upheaval mean that the music world is changing fast. The rules that have governed the industry for decades are dissolving, and weird and wonderful new genres, formats, and production tools are popping up all over the place. 2025 is sure to bring uncertainty – but also plenty of opportunities. Here are our guesses for what the future of music might hold. From bold new genres to cutting-edge production tools, there are our nine music industry trends to look out for in 2025.

Jump to these sections:

• What will be the next big thing in music?
• What’s the biggest genre of music in 2025?

1. Music will be defined by moment, not genre
2. Generative AI might enter your production workflow
3. Dirty aesthetics will take over
4. Social media will birth new formats
5. Live music will be more valued than ever
6. Smart tools will further democratize music-making
7. AI will disrupt formulaic genres
8. Breakout stars won’t need to conform
9. Dance music will show its soft side

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What will be the next big thing in music?

The next big thing in music is likely to emerge from a combination of new tech, changing listener habits, and exciting new genres. Musicians in 2025 will probably use generative AI tools to make music in radical new ways. Artists will break through with unique styles that shake up mainstream formulas – especially if they can combine them with social media-friendly formats. And we’re likely to see the rise of a dirty, authentic aesthetic in pop music and beyond. We’ll go into all of these music trends in more detail below.

What’s the biggest genre of music in 2025?

The biggest genre of music in 2025 probably won’t be a genre at all. In the era of streaming and social media, musical categories are breaking down and fusing together, turning the music industry into a colorful jumble of sounds and aesthetics. Instead, listeners now seek out genre-hopping aesthetics and moods that will accompany and heighten their daily lives. Below, we’ll run through some music industry trends for 2025 that might take the place of a “big” genre: from the slowing down of club music, to the rise of trashy aesthetics and the celebration of quirkiness in pop. Read on for our full list of predictions.

1. Music will be defined by moment, not genre

We live in an age where traditional musical categories are dissolving. Last year we anticipated the rise of genre fluidity and the personalization of music listening. As expected, music in 2024 has become ever harder to define, with streaming platforms and social media disrupting the barriers between genres and making traditional release formats redundant.

Musicians shouldn’t feel discouraged by this. The decline of stable categories doesn’t mean that music is just meaningless wallpaper. In fact, music is still a deeply meaningful soundtrack to people’s lives. Streaming platforms have seen a boom in user-made “POV” playlists, which capture and heighten special moments by offering the perfect soundtrack for a first kiss, a rainy day, or a never-ending summer. In a recent Spotify survey, 80% of young people said that they feel like the main character in a movie while listening to music during their daily activities.

This demonstrates that, as traditional categories like genre and instrumentation become less meaningful, context is becoming the most important factor in music listening. In 2025, musicians will be incentivized to think of their music not in terms of what style it is, but how it fits into a listener’s life. What special moment might your next release be the soundtrack to?

2. Generative AI might enter your production workflow

AI has been a familiar concept in music production for a while now. Many of us use products – like those from iZotope – that deploy smart technology to assist the production process. But we’ve yet to see a widely adopted music production tool that fully harnesses the chaotic, cutting-edge power of the new wave of generative AI technology (think ChatGPT for text, Stable Diffusion for images, and so on).

These tools don’t just assist your decision-making process. They throw up whole new ideas based on simple prompts, making them an unpredictable new partner in the creative process. So far, attempts to apply this technology to music have mostly taken the form of services like Udio and Suno AI that will create a whole song from a text input. These tools could seem like they are intended to replace music-makers rather than help them.

This isn’t the only way that generative AI might fit into the future of music. There are countless possible applications for the technology that could enrich, rather than replace, the music production process. Imagine a plugin that generates a kick drum based on a text prompt, or a multi FX unit that reinterprets audio in wild, unpredictable ways. Engineers are developing many such tools, but they’ve yet to break into the music-making mainstream.

2025 might be the year that a generative AI production tool is widely adopted by producers. This tool could offer exciting new ideas, sounds, or capabilities that shake up the world of production. Who knows, it might even become key to your workflow.

3. Dirty aesthetics will take over

2024 was the year that “indie sleaze” returned. This cultural trend from the early 2000s, celebrating hard partying and trashy glamor, was first revived in the fashion world. It later gatecrashed the music industry via Charli xcx’s summer-dominating album brat.

brat’s success is all the more surprising when you consider that its raw production, raunchy club beats, and off-the-cuff vocals run counter to many of the rules of the modern music industry. In the age of smartphones and social media, musicians are expected to be perfect all the time. Every look should be polished and every musical decision carefully workshopped by teams of experts.

Charli’s success – and related pop moments, like Kesha’s revival of trashy ‘00s Eurodance on “Joyride” – suggest that people are ready for something different. A lot of recent pop culture has felt pretty stage-managed. Perhaps fans are ready for something more loose, spontaneous, and fun.

Expect dirty aesthetics to be a significant music trend in 2025 – whether they show up as punky attitude, raw club energy, or unfiltered confessional lyrics. After years of being on best behavior, pop music might be about to start a rebellious phase.

4. Social media will birth new formats

In 2024, many producers will tell you that it’s harder than ever to get their music in front of listeners. Physical and download sales are a niche market now, and streaming platforms are tricky to crack. Even if one of your tracks rises high in the playlists, it’s probably reaching passive listeners who might not check out your other music, let alone become lasting fans.

Many music-lovers now primarily engage with music through social media. Instead of checking out a whole song on Spotify or buying it from your Bandcamp page, they’ll probably hear a clip of it soundtracking a viral TikTok trend. Or perhaps they follow you on Instagram, where they’re more likely to engage with live performance videos and to-camera monologues rather than listen to a full song.

For lovers of conventional music formats, this might seem like a depressing state of affairs. But innovative musicians are adapting to the new reality, developing new music-focussed formats that live natively on social media.

Instagrammers like dnksaus and jabeau share production tips and WIP clips in highly creative formats that meld inventive sound design and cutting edge tools with playful video editing. And influencers like marg.mp3 communicate their musical passion and expertise in short video clips, unearthing obscure releases for a large audience of curious music fans.

These success stories show that people are still hungry for exciting sounds – so long as they’re presented in the right way. In 2025, expect these innovative formats to become more recognized as an artform in their own right. Musicians may start to focus less on conventional releases, and more on snippets of innovative audio that celebrate the power of sound in new ways.

5. Live music will be more valued than ever

Live music is going through hard times. Rising costs are making it tougher than ever for bands and artists to earn money from performing. Music venues in countries like the US and UK are shutting down at a rapid pace. And music fans are spending less money on luxuries like concerts, while ticket prices are spiraling. Meanwhile, streaming platforms and other digital media promise to bring us all the entertainment we need in the comfort of our homes.

In spite of these disheartening music industry trends, people still value live music. A recent Spotify report found that 74% of young people have attended a live concert or show in the last year. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was one of the most significant cultural events of 2024, having a major economic impact on the cities it touched down in. On a smaller scale, music fans have embraced new forms of live music experience, such as album listening parties.

All of this shows that, regardless of their economic situation, music fans still crave the special energy of a live event. In 2025, live shows will continue to be crucial to the future of music – even as the financial margins become ever tighter. Musicians who can craft special, meaningful live experiences on a tight budget will be rewarded by their fans.

6. Smart tools will further democratize music-making

In recent years, we’ve seen a boom in smart plugins. These plugins, made by companies such as iZotope, use clever engineering and cutting-edge technology to assist producers in certain aspects of the music-making process.

Often, these tools focus on technical tasks – like mixing and mastering – that were once the preserve of highly skilled specialists with a studio full of fancy equipment. Smart plugins have helped make these tasks accessible to anyone with a laptop, a few plugins, and a good pair of ears. As a result, the overall sound quality of music has leapt upwards.

In 2024, we’ve seen exciting new smart plugins for mixing, like iZotope’s dynamic saturator, Plasma. With processing power continuing to rise and new AI technologies becoming accessible, there will probably be more innovative tools in 2025. The new generation of smart plugins could sound better, run lighter, and tackle trickier tasks than their predecessors.

Will this take the magic out of music production? Not at all. By assisting with technical tasks, smart plugins free up producers to be creative. In 2025, producers will spend less time sweating the details, and more time dreaming up new sounds and genres.

7. AI will disrupt formulaic genres

AI can’t replace artistry. Humans will always seek out human expression in art, whatever tools those humans might use to create. But generative AI is good at replicating established formulas. Think of ChatGPT’s ability to ape familiar written styles, whether it’s a formal letter or your favorite author’s turn of phrase. Or the way visual AI tools can take a famous painter’s style and churn out variations on the theme.

This kind of skilled mimicry can be applied to music. Many of our favorite genres are based on a set of recurring characteristics. Think of ambient music’s drifting synth pads, the echoing chords in dub techno, or the beat patterns behind many popular genres, from trap to reggaeton. With time, AI tools are going to get very good at mimicking these popular music genres.

In fact, this is already happening. In 2024, Spotify playlists showcasing easy-to-replicate genres like ambient have been flooded with AI-generated content. This content might not connect all that strongly with listeners. But it sounds convincing enough to be categorized in a popular genre, thereby capturing streams (and income).

Musicians should take this as a challenge, not a threat. If formulaic music can be made at the push of a button, then it’s on us to be more creative, twisting genres in exciting new ways that AI would never think of. In 2025, musicians who break the formulas will stand out.

8. Breakout stars won’t need to conform

In 2024, a bunch of oddball pop stars got very famous, very fast. Chappell Roan reached stardom almost overnight with a quirky pop style inspired by drag culture. British-Cypriot singer Artemas converted viral attention into streaming platform dominance with his dark synth pop. And Brazilian artists like Ludmilla burst onto the global scene with the futuristic sound of Funk.

These examples tell us that musicians no longer need to water down their ideas to reach a huge audience. Viral success and streaming playlist algorithms have brought a new speed and volatility to rising music trends. Bold, unusual ideas can reach a lot of curious ears quickly, without needing to pander to the lowest common denominator, or piggyback on existing genres.

This is good news for musicians with a strong vision – and for listeners, too. In 2025, we can expect to see big pop successes that don’t fit an established mold. Music will be more interesting as a result.

9. Dance music will show its soft side

Dance music has been spiraling upwards for half a decade now. Whether it’s underground clubs in Europe, big festivals in the US, or warehouse raves in South America, the sound of late night partying has been getting faster, harder, and more aggressive. Mainstay genres like techno have hit dizzying speeds, and high-energy styles like gabber, hardcore, hard house, and trance are more popular than ever.

There are a few theories as to why this music industry trend has been so long-lasting. Some argue that the pandemic left clubbers impatient and starved for adrenaline. Others point to social media: genres with big drops and heavy beats make more of an impact in the short videos that DJs and fans post online.

Whatever its source, 2025 might be the year that hard and fast gives way to slow and sensual. There are already signs of a shift. In techno, 2024 has seen the rise of “groove,” a music trend that favors subtle swing over jackhammer beats. Slower, more restrained club genres, like minimal and tech house, are on a steady rise, suggesting possible new directions for the global club scene.

It’s hard to say exactly which new sounds will break through in 2025. But if you want to make the forward-thinking club hit of the year, it might be worth notching down the tempo and exploring softer textures.

Start making the music of the future

In this article, we’ve explored some of the music trends, technologies, and cutting-edge ideas that could define the music of 2025. But of course, the music world doesn’t change by magic: it’s shaped by musicians. Want to play your own part in the future of music? Embark on your production journey with Komplete Start, a free suite of world-class production tools, from synths to samples and effects.

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