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Popular music, sometimes abbreviated to pop music, is music belonging to any of a number of contemporary musical styles that are broadly popular. A
narrower sense of the term, usually "pop music", covers mainstream music that
does not fall into any more specialized 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. For the varieties of
popular music in this sense, see the list below.
Popular music as a business enterprise
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 maximize the profits of their firm. In this
respect, popular music differs from traditional folk music, which was created
by ordinary people for their own enjoyment, and from classical music,
which was originally created to serve the purposes of the Church or for the entertainment of the nobility. (Today classical music
is often subsidized by governments and universities.)
Although the controlling forces of popular music are business enterprises, young people who aspire to become popular musicians
are certainly not always driven by the profit motive. Rather, they often want to find an outlet for their sense of expression and
creativity, or simply to have fun. Historically, the conflicting motives of business people and musicians has been a source of
tension in the popular music industry.
Performance of popular music by amateurs
Many people play popular music together with their friends, often in garages and basements, on a casual amateur basis. This
activity is one of the most widespread forms of participatory music-making in modern societies. As participatory music, "garage
bands" are in a sense a resurrection of the old tradition of folk music, which
in premodern times was composed and performed by ordinary people and transmitted exclusively by word of mouth. The difference
between the old folk music and modern amateur performance of popular music is that the participants in the latter genre are well
acquainted with the expert performances that they hear on recordings, and often try to emulate them.
The older folk music of a society often lives on in a popularized version, which is likewise performed by experts and
commercially disseminated. Such updated versions of folk music often have heavy amateur participation.
Performers and genres
A list of current performers of popular music can be found at:
Music genres that can be described as popular music include:
See also
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