Music can boost your mood and improve happiness in just nine minutes by triggering the release of dopamine [1] – the brain's ‘feel good’ chemical. But which fans feel the biggest benefit from this?

From metal to EDM, SeatPick analysed more than 8 million Reddit posts and comments to determine which genre’s fans are the happiest, most opinionated and most passionate about the music they love. Utilising VADER*, a sentiment analysis tool, they created a happiness score based on a range of metrics – from percentage of positive and negative comments to emotional divide among fans.

Key findings

• R&B fans are the happiest with their music in 2025, generating the most positive discussions, followed by reggae and classical
• Metal, rock and punk fans are the most opinionated, with fans racking up almost half a million comments in the past year
• Hip-hop fans rank as the most passionate, forming the longest and most detailed discussions

The happiest music fans in 2025, revealed

1.       R&B – 9.23 out of 10

SeatPick discovered that fans of R&B are the happiest, scoring 9.23 out of 10, with almost 61% of all comments holding a strong positive sentiment. Analysing all comments and posts from the past year, fans of Leon Thomas, Kali Uchis and The Weeknd have been elated with recent projects. R&B fans also rank as the most passionate fans, posting the longest, most in-depth comments on the subreddit, consistently sharing undiscovered artists and encouraging discussions around new music.

2.       Reggae – 8.46 out of 10

Enjoying the likes of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, reggae fans live up to their positive nature and rank the second-happiest of all music genres. With a score of 8.46 out of 10, they report the lowest percentage of negative comments and opinions online (5.6%). It’s close-knit community often positively discusses the genre's complex evolution and celebrates nostalgia, contributing to its high score in both happiness and passion.

3.       Classical – 7.69 out of 10

Fans of classical music are the third happiest, with a happiness score of 7.69 out of 10. While they received the second-highest share of emotionally intense positive comments, they were pushed into third place overall due to a relatively higher proportion of negative comments (6.1%). However, classical fans are also among the most passionate, with essays showcasing their appreciation for Redditors' performances and homages to the greats commonly found in r/classicalmusic.

4.       Jazz – 6.92 out of 10

With discussions about the peak of jazz and rare vinyl’s popular within the fanbase, their positive sentiment carries them to fourth position overall (6.92). Its high ranking can be attributed to having the lowest percentage of negative comments (5.2%) among all analysed subreddits.

5.       EDM – 6.15 out of 10

From house to hardstyle, the EDM subreddit covers a number of subgenres, with an overall happiness score of 6.15 out of 10. The stereotypical feel-good raver lives up to their name, as the genre ranks fifth happiest compared to all other genres. EDM also ranks just outside of the top five for most passionate fans, with the average length of comments and posts at 508 characters, as fans discuss underrated artists and recommendations in-depth.

To round up the top 10 happiest fans rankings, SeatPick found that opera fans rank sixth overall, followed by pop in seventh, hip-hop in eighth, rock in ninth and country in 10th.

SeatPick also identified the five most passionate fan bases by analysing the posts and comments to determine who has the most in-depth discussions based on text length, from lyric analysis to storytelling.

The most passionate fans

1.        Hip-hop

2.       R&B

3.       Reggae

4.       Classical

5.       Opera

Assessing the subreddits with the highest volume of comments on posts - indicating discussion and debate between fans - SeatPick identified the five most opinionated fanbases.

The most opinionated fans

1.       Metal

2.       Rock

3.       Punk

4.       Pop

5.      Hip-hop

Methodology

SeatPick analysed more than 8 million subreddit posts and comments from the past year (starting from 1st June 2024) to find out which music genre has the happiest fans. The data was collected from the following music genre-specific subreddits: r/rnb, r/reggae, r/classicalmusic, r/jazz, r/edm, r/hiphopheads, r/opera, r/popheads, r/rock, r/country, r/metalforthemasses and r/punk. In addition, posts and comments from r/letstalkmusic and r/music were collected. The posts and comments were then categorised into genres using keyword-based matching from the following genres: classical, country, EDM, hip-hop, jazz, metal, opera, pop, punk, reggae, R&B and rock. *These genres were then analysed using VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning), which is a sentiment analysis tool optimised for social media text. It provides a sentiment score from -1 (very negative) to +1 (very positive). To create the overall happiness score, a range of metrics per genre were calculated, which included average, median and standard deviation of sentiment, and % of strong positive/negative sentiment. Genres were then percentranked by average sentiment to get scores out of 10. To get the additional ranking of passionate, SeatPick ordered the genres by average text length, and to form the opinionated ranking, they ranked the genres by the highest number of comments on posts.

[1] Music takes 13 minutes to ‘release sadness’ and 9 to make you happy, according to new study

Author: Adam Bailey

Adam is a regular contributor for established press release distribution website Release-News.com. He writes on a wide range of topics including music.