Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is
typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast
to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or
orally to smaller, local audiences. The original application of the term is to music of the
1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States. Although popular music sometimes is known
as "pop music," the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music is a generic term for music
of all ages that appeals to popular tastes, whereas pop music usually refers to a specific
musical genre.
Overview Musicologist and specialist in popular music
Philip Tagg defined the notion in the light of sociocultural and economical aspects:
Popular music, unlike art music, is conceived for mass distribution to large and often socioculturally
heterogeneous groups of listeners, stored and distributed in non-written form, only
possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes a commodity and in capitalist
societies, subject to the laws of "free" enterprise, according to which it should ideally sell
as much as possible of as little as possible to as many as possible.
For Richard Middleton and Peter Manuel, "a common approach to defining popular music
is to link popularity with scale of activity", such as "sales of sheet music or recordings".
This approach has a problem, in that "repeat hearings are not counted, depth of response
does not feature, socially diverse audiences are treated as one aggregated market and there
is no differentiation between musical styles". Another way to define popular music is "to
link popularity with means of dissemination"; however, this is problematic, because "all
sorts of music, from folk to avant garde, are subject to mass mediation". A third approach
to defining popular music is to based on "social group – either a mass audience or a particular
class the working class", an approach which is problematic because social structures cannot
simply be overlain onto musical styles. These three approaches are "too partial" and "too
static". Moreover, "understandings of popular music have changed with time".
Form
Form in popular music is most often sectional, the most common sections being verse, chorus
or refrain, and bridge. Other common forms include thirty-two-bar form, verse-chorus
form, and the twelve bar blues. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different
music for each stanza of the lyrics. The verse and chorus are considered the primary
elements. Each verse usually has the same melody, but the lyrics change for most verses.
The chorus usually has a melodic phrase and a key lyrical line which is repeated. Pop
songs may have an introduction and coda, but these elements are not essential to the identity
of most songs. Pop songs that use verses and choruses often have a bridge, which, as its
name suggests, is a section which connects the verse and chorus at one or more points
in the song. The verse and chorus are usually repeated
throughout a song, while the bridge, intro, and coda tend to be used only once. Some pop
songs may have a solo section, particularly in rock or blues-influenced pop. During the
solo section one or more instruments play a melodic line which may be the melody used
by the singer, or, in blues- or jazz-influenced pop, the solo may be improvised based on the
chord progression. A solo usually features a single instrumental performer or less commonly,
more than one instrumentalist. Thirty-two-bar form uses four sections, most
often eight measures long each, two verses or A sections, a contrasting B section and
a return of the verse in one last A section. Verse-chorus form or ABA form may be combined
with AABA form, in compound AABA forms. Variations such as a1 and a2 can also be used. The repetition
of one chord progression may mark off the only section in a simple verse form such as
the twelve bar blues. History
"The most significant feature of the emergent popular music industry of the late 18th and
early 19th centuries was the extent of its focus on the commodity form of sheet music".
The availability of inexpensive, widely available sheet music versions of popular songs and
instrumental music pieces made it possible for music to be disseminated to a wide audience
of amateur music-makers, who could play and sing popular music at home. In addition to
the influence of sheet music, another factor was the increasing availability during the
late 18th and early 19th century of public popular music performances in "pleasure gardens
and dance halls, popular theatres and concert rooms". The early popular music performers
worked hand-in-hand with the sheet music industry to promote popular sheet music. One of the
early popular music performers to attain widespread popularity was a Swedish opera singer Jenny
Lind, who toured the US in the mid-19th century. During the 19th century, more people began
getting involved in music by participating in amateur choirs or joining brass bands.
The centre of the music publishing industry in the US during the late 19th century was
in New York's 'Tin Pan Alley' district. The Tin Pan Alley music publishers developed a
new method for promoting sheet music: incessant promotion of new songs. One of the technological
innovations that helped to spread popular music around the turn of the century was player
pianos; these allowed people to hear the new popular piano tunes. By the early 1900s, the
big trends in popular music were the increasing popularity of vaudeville theaters and dance
halls and the new invention—the gramophone player. The record industry grew very rapidly;
"By 1920 there were almost 80 record companies in Britain, and almost 200 in the USA". Radio
broadcasting of music, which began in the early 1920s, helped to spread popular songs
to a huge audience. Another factor which helped to disseminate popular music was the introduction
of "talking pictures"—sound films—in the late 1920s. In the late 1920s and throughout
the 1930s, there was a move towards consolidation in the recording industry which led several
major companies to dominate the record industry. In the 1950s and 1960s, television began to
play an increasingly important role in disseminating new popular music. Variety shows regularly
showcased popular singers and bands. In the 1960s, the development of new technologies
in recording such as multitrack recorders gave sound engineers an increasingly important
role in popular music. By using recording techniques, sound engineers could create new
sounds and sound effects that were not possible using traditional "live" recording techniques.
In the 1970s, the trend towards consolidation in the recording industry continued to the
point that the "... dominance was in the hands of five huge transnational organizations,
three American-owned and two European-owned [companies]". In the 1990s, the consolidation
trend took a new turn: inter-media consolidation. This trend saw music recording companies being
consolidated with film, television, magazines, and other media companies, an approach which
facilitated cross-marketing promotion between subsidiaries. For example, a record company's
singing star could be cross-promoted by the firm's television and magazine arms.
The "introduction of digital equipment" in the 1990s resulted in what Grove Dictionary
of Music dubbed the creation of "new sound worlds," as well as facilitating DIY music
production by amateur musicians and "tiny independent record labels".
See also Music radio
Popular culture List of popular music performers
List of popular music genres Popular music pedagogy
List of honorific titles in popular music Music popularity index
Sources Tagg Philip "Analysing Popular Music : Theory,
Method and Practice" in Popular Music, 2 Smith, Joe. Off the Record: an Oral History
of Popular Music. Ed. by Mitchell Fink. New York: Warner Books. xiv, 429 p., including
also [56] p. of b&w portrait photos. ISBN 0-446-51232-X
Middleton, Richard. Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN
0-335-15275-9. Bennett.
Birrer, Frans A. J.. "Definitions and research orientation: do we need a definition of popular
music?" in D. Horn, ed., Popular Music Perspectives, 2, p. 99-106.
Hall, S.. "Popular culture, politics, and history", in Popular Culture Bulletin, 3,
Open University duplicated paper. Everett, Walter. "Swallowed by a Song: Paul
Simon's Crisis of Chromaticism", Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis. New York:
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510004-2. Beaud, Paul, and Alfred Willener. Musique
et vie quotidienne, essai de sociologie d'une nouvelle culture: electro-acoustique et musique
pop; improvisation, in series, Repères. [S.l.]: Éditions Mame. 272 p. ISBN 2-250-00512-5
Hamm, Charles. Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
ISBN 0-393-01257-3. Manuel, Peter. Popular Musics of the Non-Western
World: An Introductory Survey. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505342-7.
Marcello Sorce Keller. "Popular Music in Europe", in James Porter, Timothy Rice and Chris Goertzen,
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: Europe, New York, pp. 204- 213.
References
Further reading T.W. Adorno with G. Simpson: ‘On Popular
Music’, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, ix, 17–48
R. Iwaschkin: Popular Music: a Reference Guide P. Hardy and D. Laing: The Faber Companion
to 20th-Century Popular Music Larry Freeman: The Melody Lingers on: 50 Years
of Popular Song. 212 p. N.B.: Includes a chronology, "50 Years of Song Hits", on p. 193-215.
Haddix, Chuck. Rags to Be-bop: the Sounds of Kansas City Music, 1890-1945. [Text by]
Chuck Haddix. Without ISBN J. Kotarba, B. Merrill, J. P. Williams, & P.
Vannini Understanding Society through Popular Music. NY:Routledge, 2013 ISBN 9780415 641951
R. Middleton: Studying Popular Music P. Gammond: The Oxford Companion to Popular
Music D. Brackett: Interpreting Popular Music
Volume! a French peer-reviewed journal dedicated to popular music studies.
External links Famous Music Videos - Music Video Database
- YouTube, Google Video, MySpace TV, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, Veoh, Current.com, ClipFish.de,
MyVideo.de, Break.com and EyeSpot The 1950s-2000's Week-By-Week - Looks at pop
musicradio and music news through these decades. Pop Culture Madness Features the most requested
pop songs 1920s through today The Daily Vault music reviews
mp3skull mp3 skull download Yale Music Library Guide to Pop Music Research
Volume! the French academic journal dedicated to the study of popular music
Éditions Mélanie Seteun ! a French publisher dedicated to popular music studies - publishes
Volume!, the French journal of PMS.