Escape Room
Escape room is a Spotify-coined label for adventurous pop, R&B and hip-hop that mixes trap-style beats with indie and experimental electronic production.
Glenn McDonald, the data analyst behind Spotify's genre system, made the name up around 2016 because no existing term fit the cluster. He has said it plays on escaping from trap and on the puzzle-solving feel of a real escape room. The music borrows sounds from trap but sits closer to experimental indie, R&B and pop, and it overlaps with hyperpop, art pop and alternative R&B. The label became widely known through Spotify Wrapped in 2020.
Artists it is known for: Charli XCX, Tierra Whack, Kero Kero Bonito.
- Family
- Alternative & Indie
- On Spotify
- No longer returned by Spotify’s API
- What it is
- A label Spotify coined
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 12%
About 10,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have escape room among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Escape Room artists
Slayyyter
underscores
Dean Blunt
Jane Remover
Doechii
Magdalena Bay
JPEGMAFIA
Anderson .Paak
Ravyn Lenae
FKA twigs
The escape room artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
- The Fader: explainer on Spotify's escape room genre (December 2020)
- Paper: explainer on Spotify Wrapped genres and escape room
- Wikipedia: Hyperpop
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.