Every genre a line, every artist a station.
A century of popular music, 1920 to today, drawn as one transit network you can ride.
Open the networkGenres are lines
Each line starts in the year its genre began, branches where new genres grew out of it, and runs until it closed or on into today.
Artists are stations
Artists sit on the lines they played, at the years that defined them. An artist who moved between genres is an interchange.
Every line has sources
The map is curated by hand, with at least two published sources for every line and a note wherever historians disagree.
The map so far
- Lines
- 23
- Trunk lines
- 3 of 12
- Artists
- 28
- Stations
- 36
The map is being curated line by line, starting with rock and its roots in gospel and R&B. More lines arrive as they are researched. Prefer a list? The network has a full directory of every line and station, for keyboards and screen readers too.