Dance music is the UK's second most popular genre, BPI reveals

Dance music is now the UK’s second most popular genre according to new analysis shared by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

Data shared by the organisation found that the music genre has accounted for around 25% of weekly top 10 singles this year, with huge chart-topping hits this year coming particularly in recent months in the form of LF System’s ‘Afraid To Feel’ (spending eight consecutive weeks at the UK chart’s summit), and Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal’s late-summer mega-hit ‘B.O.T.A. (Baddest Of Them All)’ (which replaced LF System at the top at the start of September).

The BPI said dance music’s popularity had consistently increased over the past three years to leave it trailing only to pop music in the UK. The data also found that women in dance music were central to the genre’s rising popularity, with them featuring on half of the tracks making it to the top 10.

Many of those women, however, appear as featured artists alongside male producers, reflecting a report shared by BBC Radio 1 DJ Jaguar’s own foundation in August which found that just 5% of dance music in the UK charts had exclusively women or non-binary artists as the primary artist and feature.

Geoff Taylor, from the BPI, told the BBC that dance music’s surge in popularity in the UK was being”powered in part by homegrown talent”, and he credited Eliza Rose and LF System as two central figures to that.

Find out more about the BPI’s analysis of chart data here.