Glitch
Glitch is a style of experimental electronic music made from the sounds of malfunctioning technology, such as skipping CDs, digital errors and faulty recording equipment.
It took shape in the 1990s, especially in Germany and Japan, with artists like Oval, who damaged CDs on purpose so they would skip and built music from the result. Producers treat errors as raw material and arrange the resulting clicks and cuts into rhythms and textures. The Clicks & Cuts compilations on the German label Mille Plateaux, from 2000 onward, helped define the style. The later glitch hop applies the same techniques to hip hop beats.
Artists it is known for: Oval, Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda.
- Family
- Electronic & Dance
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- Germany and Japan, 1990s
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 2%
About 1,400 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have glitch among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Glitch artists
brakence
glaive
100 gecs
ericdoa
kmoe
osquinn
AJ Dispirito
GooseworxThe glitch artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.