Popular music

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

Popular music is a category of music that shares a number of aspects. These include musical aesthetics, style, and genre; commercial-industrial context; patterns of production, distribution, and consumption; and of issues of taste and perceived quality. Given this complexity, while broad patterns and tendencies are identifiable, issues as to whether a piece of music can be categorized as popular do not so much derive from a common sense interpretation of the adjective, whereby popular might be understood to represent something that reaches and is appreciated by large audiences, as an assessment based on a particular concatenation of the previously outlined factors.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMusic in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Encyclopedia. Vol. 2
EditorsWilliam Forde Thompson
Place of PublicationU.K.
PublisherSage
Pages883-887
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)9781452283029
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Keywords

  • popular music
  • social aspects

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Popular music'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this