Pluggnb is music’s fastest-growing genre, Splice and MIDiA report
Pluggnb is music’s fastest-growing genre on Splice, blending trap, R&B, and gospel into a whole new vibe. Tatiana Cristaso dives into how this sound is shaping the future of music in MIDiA’s Sounds of 2025 report.
Pluggnb is music’s fastest-growing genre, say Splice and MIDiA
by Tatiana Cirisano via MIDiA Research
With one of the largest, most sonically-diverse catalogues of sounds and samples, Splice provides the music that makes the music for producers around the world. So trends in what users are searching for and downloading on Splice can tell us a lot about the sounds of the future. This is why MIDiA and Splice teamed up for the brand-new Sounds of 2025 report, which unpacks thegenres, cities, and cultural moments shaping the coming year in music.
Among the hundreds of genres in Splice’s tagging system, one is raising its volume louder than the rest: pluggnb. A fusion of the trap subgenre plugg with ‘90s R&B and gospel harmonies, pluggnb saw downloads on Splice grow 342.8% to 699,987 in 2024. This earns pluggnb the title of the fastest-growing genre on the platform.
The path to this crown has been a decade in the making. Plugg can be traced back to Atlanta circa 2013, when the collective BeatPluggz took inspiration from the soul-inspired sounds of ‘90s Atlanta legends like Zaytoven and OutKast. But the latest wave – pluggnb – emerged around 2017, pioneered by underground rap collective SlayWorld and spreading prominently on SoundCloud. Over the next few years, collaborations between underground plugg rappers and more mainstream names – such as FLEE and StoopidXool’s 2019 hit “SWISH/USE 2” featuring Brent Faiyaz – helped the genre reach wider audiences, just in time for TikTok’s US launch. Splice creators took notice, and the genre’s downloads grew 647.0% from just over 21,000 in 2022 to just over 158,000 in 2023. The release of the PluggnB pack in April 2024, from sample label Audeobox, helped catapult the genre to more producers, amassing over 102,000 downloads by the following month.
While pluggnb might not be the biggest genre on Splice – or at least, not yet – there is a lot to learn from its rapid ascent. The drivers fueling pluggnb’s growth reflect the broader state of music creation and listening, and what makes a genre pop today:
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- Hip-hop roots: It is no fluke that pluggnb is rooted in hip hop and trap – the two biggest genres on Splice. Hip hop is Splice’s stronghold, with 48.7 million downloads in 2024 (up 1.8% year-on-year), followed by its cousin genre of trap, with 35.0 million downloads (up 3.1%). Pluggnb’s connections to both modern underground hip hop culture and mainstream trap and R&B make it accessible for listeners. Meanwhile, its instantly-recognisable sound makes it highly accessible to create; a quick search for pluggnb tutorials on YouTube turns up hundreds of results.
- A soundtrack for the internet: The accessibility of pluggnb has also led to a surge of fan-made remixes on platforms like TikTok, which in turn helped fuel the genre’s rise among professionals. In one example, a proliferation of bootleg pluggnb remixes of K-pop songs led Le Serrafim to release an official pluggnb remix of their single “Easy”. This underlines a larger trend: New generations of music fans want to take an active, participatory role in their favourite music, leading to the rapid rise of remixing as a form of fan expression. More than a musical style, pluggnb has thus become a gateway to tap into internet culture. Other genres that take off now and in the future are likely to have this in common
- Seoul vibes, LA ties: Pluggnb downloads in Los Angeles – Splice’s top city by annual downloads – shot up by 290.3% in 2024, making it the city’s second-fastest-growing genre. At number one is K-pop, which grew 516.6%. This is no coincidence. As K-pop travels across the Pacific, pluggnb is a key factor in the genre’s growing hip hop flavour. The most prominent example is ILLIT’s March 2024 single “Magnetic” — the fastest K-pop debut to reach 100 million streams. This reflects the cultural flow between K-pop and the Western music industry that is sure to continue evolving in the coming year
Sounds of 2025
Pluggnb is the fastest-growing genre on Splice, but it is not the only sound that will define 2025 and beyond. Explore the full Sounds of 2025 report to learn about the reclamation of Brazilian phonk by producers in São Paulo, the global breakthrough of Jersey club from the streets of Newark to Berlin’s Berghain, how a single Splice sample fueled a diverse range of hits in 2024, and more.
Access the full Sounds of 2025 report here.
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