Noun

Singular pop music

Plural uncountable

pop music (uncountable)

1. Music intended for or accepted by a wide audience.

   Pop music, despite its commercial focus, includes many artistic gems.

Related terms

• pop
• pop culture

Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple love songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll and later rock style.

Definitions

Hatch and Millward define pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz and folk musics". Although pop music is often seen as oriented towards the singles charts, as a genre it is not the sum of all chart music, which has always contained songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs, while pop music as a genre is usually seen as existing and developing separately. Thus "pop music" may be used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll.