arrays or joins for multiple values?

[Robert Kane]

Please help the newbie!
I need to create a database for local musical artists. They will complete a form with 15 choices of music genres (Checkboxes) where they choose the type(s) of music they play, which could be one or several. A user search for a type of music would display all artists who play that type, as well as all other types played by each artist displayed. I have a ‘music’ table for music types with music_id and music_type. I have a separate ‘artist’ table with artist_id, artist_name, and music_genre. Is it better to store the music types for each artist as an array in the music_genre row or use separate tables and “joins”? Any coding help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!