DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Classical music probably peaked in popularity in the late 1800's-early 1900's, overthrown by jazz in the 20's. In this case it was an extremely long ascent with an extremely long descent, spanning centuries. However, if you divide it into its sub-genres (Renaissance, Baroque, High Classical, Romantic, Modern) there are clear ascents, peaks and descents.

I'd say jazz's peak was probably in the early 50's, especially if you consider swing to be a kind of jazz.

Something not mentioned is that folk music probably peaked in popularity in the early-mid 60's. Like a lot of other genres it was subsumed by another genre (in this case rock, which created the sub-genre "folk-rock"), which more often than not is the beginning of the end of a genre's peak popularity. One could also argue that rap being integrated into other genres in the past 20 years or so is a sign that rap has peaked as well.

I think what we might call "generic pop" is going to be around for a very long time, in part because it's such a broad and flexible genre, and thus, because it has such a broad appeal. I think it's lifeline might end up being like Classical music, with a lifespan measured in centuries.

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William_the_Bloody

Thank you for your contribution, I think your right on the money with pop music. Although the subgenres in pop change a lot faster, every decade or two (disco, new wave, R&B ect) instead of century, largely due to advancements in media and technology. I don't think pop music will fade away until we evolve into some higher form of species. So there is probably a century or two more to go before we hit peak pop. Rock is probably toast though.

So...

Classical
Jazz
Country
Rock
Metal
Punk
Rap/hip hop
Parts of EDM
Disco (Part of pop)
and waiting on Prog rock

Here is another.

Industrial music:

Starts in the UK in the late 70's but doesn't really begin its ascent until the mid 80's with the popularity of band like Ministry & Skinny Puppy, we hit peak industrial sometime in the early 90's, perhaps 1994, the big commercial spike of NIN, FLA ect, where after that it begins a quick decent back down into a small underground niche.

Ninetales

careful runnning into this guy with the thousand foot edge