Genre is the term for any category of art, based on certain accordances such as time, aesthetic or function.
In music, there are genres such as rock, pop, jazz, classic and electronica (only to name a few) which are divided into further sub-genres. The genre rock for example encompasses sub-genres like hard rock, glam rock, punk rock and metal, the latter can even be divided into more sub-categories such as speed metal, black metal, death metal and goth metal. A further example is the genre techno with its sub-categories hardcore, gabba or tech house (whereas the latter is more a mixed genre).
The sense and use of categorizing music into genres is open to dispute. However, it certainly simplifies discussions and descriptions of different forms of music as people generally share images of music genres so that talking about genres makes it easier for everyone to get an approximate picture of the discussed music.
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