Quiz Category · Music
Music
Artists, albums, genres, and music history.
From classical to contemporary — questions on the people and works that define popular and traditional music.
Music here is treated as a wide field rather than the playlist most users carry on their phones. The catalog covers Indian classical (Hindustani and Carnatic — gharanas, ragas, the major vocalists and instrumentalists of the twentieth century), film music across decades and languages (composers, lyricists, playback singers, landmark soundtracks), Indian folk and regional traditions, and global popular music — rock, jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, electronic — alongside Western classical from the Baroque through the twentieth century. Easy rounds keep to the names and songs a casual listener would recognise. Medium rounds expect knowledge of the composer behind a famous film score, the album an iconic song came from, the genre a movement belonged to. Hard rounds ask for the year, the original recording label, the side musician, the raga or time signature, and the title of the lesser-known second album that critics rate higher than the breakthrough. The category is useful for music students, exam aspirants brushing up on cultural-affairs questions (Padma awards and Sangeet Natak Akademi recognitions appear regularly), and listeners who want to find out whether their taste is as wide as they think it is.
Pick a difficulty
10 questions per round24 music questions with answers
Across easy, medium and hard · reveal each answer to check yourself-
01 Who is known as the 'King of Pop'? easy
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The correct answer is B. Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson. The title was popularised in the late 1980s and is generally credited to Elizabeth Taylor, who used it introducing him at an awards ceremony.
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02 Which band sang 'Hey Jude'? easy
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The correct answer is B. The Beatles.
The Beatles, released in 1968. Paul McCartney wrote it for John Lennon's son Julian during his parents' divorce — it began as 'Hey Jules' before the name was changed to sing better.
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03 How many strings does a standard guitar have? easy
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The correct answer is C. 6.
Six, tuned E-A-D-G-B-E from lowest to highest. Twelve-string variants double each course for a fuller sound, and bass guitars usually carry four.
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04 What is the highest female singing voice? easy
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The correct answer is C. Soprano.
Soprano. Below it come mezzo-soprano and contralto. The male equivalents run tenor, baritone and bass, with countertenor sitting above tenor.
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05 Which instrument has 88 keys? easy
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The correct answer is B. Piano.
The piano — 52 white and 36 black, spanning just over seven octaves. The range was standardised by Steinway in the 1880s and has barely changed since.
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06 Who sang 'Like a Rolling Stone'? easy
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The correct answer is A. Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan, in 1965. At six minutes it was roughly double the length radio would normally play, and its electric arrangement drew boos from folk audiences that year.
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07 What does 'BPM' stand for in music? easy
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The correct answer is A. Beats Per Minute.
Beats per minute, the measure of tempo. Roughly 120 BPM is typical for dance music; a slow ballad might sit near 60, which is one beat per second.
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08 Which city is known as the birthplace of jazz? easy
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The correct answer is C. New Orleans.
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09 What is the best-selling album of all time? medium
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The correct answer is C. Thriller.
Thriller, with estimates around 70 million copies and some counts considerably higher. Precision is impossible here — certification bodies count differently by country and era.
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10 Who composed 'The Four Seasons'? medium
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The correct answer is C. Vivaldi.
Antonio Vivaldi, around 1720. Each of the four concertos came with an accompanying sonnet, possibly written by Vivaldi himself, describing what the music depicts.
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11 What year did Elvis Presley die? medium
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The correct answer is B. 1977.
1977, at Graceland, aged 42. His estate earned more in several years after his death than during his life, largely through licensing.
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12 Which instrument is Yo-Yo Ma famous for playing? medium
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The correct answer is B. Cello.
The cello. He began performing publicly at four or five and has recorded Bach's cello suites three separate times across his career, decades apart.
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13 What is the name of Beyoncé's fanbase? medium
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The correct answer is B. Beyhive.
The Beyhive — a pun on 'bee hive'. Fandom names like this became a standard part of pop marketing in the 2010s.
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14 Who wrote 'Bohemian Rhapsody'? medium
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The correct answer is C. Freddie Mercury.
Freddie Mercury, for Queen's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. It runs almost six minutes with no chorus, and the label reportedly resisted releasing it as a single for exactly that reason.
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15 What is the longest-running musical on Broadway? medium
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The correct answer is C. The Phantom of the Opera.
The Phantom of the Opera, with over 13,000 performances between 1988 and its close in April 2023. It still holds the record even though it is no longer running.
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16 Which rapper's real name is Marshall Mathers? medium
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The correct answer is C. Eminem.
Eminem. The stage name comes from his initials, M and M, and his alter ego Slim Shady gave the 1999 album its title.
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17 What is the Köchel catalogue used for? hard
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The correct answer is B. Mozart's works.
Cataloguing Mozart's works in roughly chronological order. It is why his pieces carry a K or KV number — the Requiem is K. 626 — and it was compiled by Ludwig von Köchel in 1862, long after Mozart's death.
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18 Who was the first artist to have a posthumous number one hit? hard
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The correct answer is C. Otis Redding.
Otis Redding, whose '(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. He recorded it days before dying in a plane crash at 26.
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19 What is the musical term for 'very soft'? hard
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The correct answer is B. Pianissimo.
Pianissimo, marked pp. Piano (p) alone means soft; pianississimo (ppp) is softer still. At the other end, forte is loud and fortissimo very loud.
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20 Which composer went deaf? hard
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The correct answer is C. Beethoven.
Beethoven, whose hearing began failing in his late twenties. He was almost completely deaf by the time he wrote the Ninth Symphony and had to be turned around at its premiere to see the audience applauding.
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21 What is the highest-grossing concert tour of all time? hard
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The correct answer is B. Taylor Swift - The Eras Tour.
Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, which grossed about $2.08 billion across 149 shows between March 2023 and December 2024 — the first tour to pass both $1 billion and $2 billion. Coldplay's Music of the Spheres is second at roughly $1.5 billion.
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22 What instrument did Miles Davis play? hard
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The correct answer is B. Trumpet.
The trumpet. He sat at the centre of several distinct jazz movements — bebop, cool jazz, modal and jazz fusion — repeatedly abandoning a style he had helped establish.
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23 What is the tritone interval also known as? hard
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The correct answer is B. Devil's interval.
The devil's interval, or diabolus in musica — three whole tones apart, splitting the octave exactly in half. Stories of a medieval ban are overstated, but it was long treated as harsh and unstable.
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24 Who wrote the opera 'The Magic Flute'? hard
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The correct answer is C. Mozart.
Mozart, premiered in 1791 just weeks before his death. It was written for a popular suburban theatre rather than the court, which is why it is in German rather than Italian.
The full music pool runs to 300 questions — 100 questions per difficulty across easy, medium and hard. Each round you play is shuffled fresh, so the same ten never come up twice in a row. Pick a difficulty above to start a timed round, or scroll on for related categories.
Frequently asked questions
About the music quiz- What genres does the music quiz cover?
- Western classical, Indian classical (Hindustani and Carnatic), rock, pop, jazz, hip-hop, country, electronic, and film music (Bollywood and Hollywood scores).
- Is the music quiz weighted toward Indian or international music?
- Both. Indian classical and Bollywood film music appear at every level. International pop, rock, and classical dominate the harder rounds.
- Are instrument-related questions included?
- Yes — instruments, their origins, famous players, and the music traditions they belong to all appear.
- Are recent chart hits in the set?
- Some — the set leans toward iconic music with staying power rather than transient chart toppers, but breakthroughs from the last few years do appear.