Popular music
Parent categories: popular - music
With the arrival of music halls in the newly industrialized mid-19th century, folk music gave way to popular music and ordinary people of the Western world were first offered music as a mass commodity packaged and distributed for the purpose of earning a profit. [Jun 2006]
Related: dance music - hit - music - music halls - musical genres - parlour music - popular music theory - pop music - rock music - Tin Pan Alley - urban music
See also: more musical genres
Tar-ra-ra-boom-der-ay (1891) - Henry J. Sayers
image sourced here.
Definition
Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. It stands in contrast to classical music, which historically was the music of elites or the upper strata of society, and traditional folk music which was shared non-commercially. It is sometimes abbreviated to pop music, although pop music is more often used for a narrower branch of popular music. --http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music [Oct 2005]
Popular music, often called simply pop music, is music belonging to any of a number of contemporary musical styles broadly popular (ergo the term). There are really two meanings for the term. The narrower meaning covers mainstream music that does not fall into any other convenient style such as jazz or hip hop. In the broader sense, "popular music" means any sort of music intended for mass consumption and propagated over the radio and similar media.
A defining characteristic of popular music (in the broader sense) is that it is the product of the modern business enterprise, and is disseminated for the purpose of earning a profit. Executives and employees of popular music businesses try to select and cultivate the music that will have the greatest success with the public, and thus maximimize the profits of their firm. In this respect, popular music differs from traditional folk music, which is created by ordinary people for their own enjoyment; and much classical music, which was originally created to serve the purposes of the Church or for the entertainment of the nobility. [...] --http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music [2004]
On avoiding popular music
In search of popular music
In a post titled why do i fight it? og of popyourfunk says:
been avoiding gnarls barkley, certain that i would not like it, based on dangermouse's involvement in the most unfortunate grey album. this morning, one of the local hip-hop stations exposed me to the single crazy. oh, what a fool i've been. guess i should read stereogum more often.
Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club (2002) - Bernard Gendron
See entry on Bernard Gendron
Waiting for the Man: The Story of Drugs and Popular Music (1988) - Harry Shapiro
See entry on drugs in music