What is Popular Music?

There are many reasons as to why it is very difficult to define “pop music”. What it is that makes something popular is the root to this problem. The first definition I have found for the word popular is “Widely liked or appreciated” (http://www.answers.com/topic/popular). This means that to define one specific genre in music as “popular” would be a very difficult task. First off, if we are looking at people’s tastes in music, different people like different music. This means that what is popular in one group of people can be very different to what is popular in another group. This problem also reaches a dead end where time is concerned. Over time, people change their tastes and different types of music are more popular during different time periods. There is no clear cut way of measuring how popular different artists or different genres of music are. By looking at the number of singles or albums sold, we do not get an accurate account of what people like. This is due to the rise in illegal downloads which means that what music is “popular” cannot be measured.