Technology and media

Left, Michael Jackson; right, Madonna known respectively as the "King and Queen of
Pop".[23]
In the 1940s improved microphone design allowed a more intimate singing style and
ten or twenty years later, inexpensive and more durable 45 rpm records for singles
"revolutionized the manner in which pop has been disseminated", which helped to
move pop music to "a record/radio/film star system".[24] Another technological
change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s; with televised
performances, "pop stars had to have a visual presence".[24] In the 1960s, the
introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios meant that teenagers in the
developed world could listen to music outside of the home.[24] By the early 1980s,
the promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of music
television channels like MTV, which "favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson
and Madonna who had a strong visual appeal".[24]

The 1960s British Invasion marked a period when the US charts were inundated with
British acts such as the Beatles (pictured 1964).
Multi-track recording (from the 1960s); and digital sampling (from the 1980s) have
also been utilized as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music.[4]
During the mid-1960s, pop music made repeated forays into new sounds, styles, and
techniques that inspired public discourse among its listeners. The word
"progressive" was frequently used, and it was thought that every song and single
was to be a "progression" from the last.[25] Music critic Simon Reynolds writes
that beginning with 1967, a divide would exist between "progressive" pop and
"mass/chart" pop, a separation which was "also, broadly, one between boys and
girls, middle-class and working-class."[26]

The latter half of the 20th-century included a large-scale trend in American

culture in which the boundaries between art and pop music were increasingly
blurred.[27] Between 1950 and 1970, there was a debate of pop versus art.[28] Since
then, certain music publications have embraced the music's legitimacy, a trend
referred to as "poptimism".[28]

Stylistic evolution
Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from other genres of
popular music. Early pop music drew on the sentimental ballad for its form, gained
its use of vocal harmonies from gospel and soul music, instrumentation from jazz
and rock music, orchestration from classical music, tempo from dance music, backing
from electronic music, rhythmic elements from hip-hop music, and spoken passages
from rap.[4][verification needed] In 2016, a Scientific Reports study that examined
over 464,000 recordings of popular music recorded between 1955 and 2010 found that
since the 1960s, pop music had found less variety in pitch progressions, grown
average loudness levels,[29] less diverse instrumentation and recording techniques,
and less timbral variety.[30] Scientific American's John Matson reported that this
"seems to support the popular anecdotal observation that pop music of yore was
"better", or at least more varied, than today�s top-40 stuff". However, he also
noted that the study may not have been entirely representative of pop in each
generation.[30]

In the 1960s, the majority of mainstream pop music fell in two categories: guitar,
drum and bass groups or singers backed by a traditional orchestra.[31] Since early
in the decade, it was common for pop producers, songwriters, and engineers to
freely experiment with musical form, orchestration, unnatural reverb, and other
sound effects. Some of the best known examples are Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and
Joe Meek's use of homemade electronic sound effects for acts like the Tornados.[32]
At the same time, pop music on radio and in both American and British film moved
away from refined Tin Pan Alley to more eccentric songwriting and incorporated
reverb-drenched rock guitar, symphonic strings, and horns played by groups of
properly arranged and rehearsed studio musicians.[33] A 2019 study held by New York
University in which 643 participants had to rank how familier a pop song is to
them, songs from the 1960s turned out to be the most memorable, significantly more
than songs from recent years 2000 to 2015.[34]

Before the progressive pop of the late 1960s, performers were typically unable to
decide on the artistic content of their music.[35] Assisted by the mid-1960s
economic boom, record labels began investing in artists, giving them the freedom to
experiment, and offering them limited control over their content and marketing.[36]
This situation declined after the late 1970s and would not reemerge until the rise
of Internet stars.[36] Indie pop, which developed in the late 1970s, marked another
departure from the glamour of contemporary pop music, with guitar bands formed on
the then-novel premise that one could record and release their own music without
having to procure a record contract from a major label.[37]

The 1980s are commonly remembered for an increase in the use of digital recording,
associated with the usage of synthesizers, with synth-pop music and other
electronic genres featuring non-traditional instruments increasing in popularity.
[38] By 2014, pop music worldwide had been permeated by electronic dance music.[39]
In 2018, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, concluded that pop
music has become 'sadder' since the 1980s. The elements of happiness and brightness
have eventually been replaced with the electronic beats making the pop music more
'sad yet danceable'.[40]

International spread
The story of pop music is largely the story of the intertwining pop culture of the
United States and the United Kingdom in the postwar era.
� Bob Stanley[39]
Pop music has been dominated by the American and (from the mid-1960s) British music
industries, whose influence has made pop music something of an international
monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music,
sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local
characteristics.[41] Some of these trends (for example Europop) have had a
significant impact of the development of the genre.[42]

According to Grove Music Online, "Western-derived pop styles, whether coexisting

with or marginalizing distinctively local genres, have spread throughout the world
and have come to constitute stylistic common denominators in global commercial
music cultures".[43] Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed a
thriving pop music industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop. Japan
has for several years produced a greater quantity of music than everywhere except
the US.[clarification needed][43] The spread of Western-style pop music has been
interpreted variously as representing processes of Americanization, homogenization,
modernization, creative appropriation, cultural imperialism, or a more general
process of globalization.[43]

In Korea, pop music's influence has led to the birth of boy bands and girl groups
which have gained overseas renown through both their music and aesthetics.[44]
Korean co-ed groups (mixed gender groups) have not been as successful.[45]

See also
icon Pop music portal
Music portal
Honorific nicknames in popular music
Origins of rock and roll
Popular music pedagogy
List of popular music genres
History of music
Public domain music
References
Traditional Pop, Allmusic.com. Retrieved 25 August 2016
R. Middleton, et al., "Pop", Grove music online, retrieved 14 March 2010.
(subscription required)
Gilliland, John (1969). "Show 1 � Play A Simple Melody: Pete Seeger on the origins
of pop music" (audio). Pop Chronicles. University of North Texas Libraries.
S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ISBN 0-521-55660-0, pp. 95�105.
D. Hatch and S. Millward, From Blues to Rock: an Analytical History of Pop Music
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), ISBN 0-7190-1489-1, p. 1.
R. Serge Denisoff and William L. Schurk, Tarnished Gold: the Record Industry
Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 3rd edn., 1986), ISBN 0-
88738-618-0, pp. 2�3.
Moore, Allan F. (2016). Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular
Song. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-05265-4.
Musicologist Allan Moore surmises that the term "pop music" itself may have been
popularized by Pop art.[7]
Lamb, Bill (29 September 2018). "What Is Pop Music?". ThoughtCo.
J. Simpson and E. Weiner, Oxford English Dictionary(Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989). ISBN 0-19-861186-2, cf. pop.
D. Hatch and S. Millward, From Blues to Rock: an Analytical History of Pop Music,
ISBN 0-7190-1489-1, p. 49.
"Pop", The Oxford Dictionary of Music, retrieved 9 March 2010.(subscription
required)
Kenneth Gloag in The Oxford Companion to Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), ISBN 0-19-866212-2, p. 983.
T. Warner, Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital
Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), ISBN 0-7546-3132-X, pp. 3�4.
"Van's Brown Eyed Girl hits the 10 million mark in US". BBC. 5 October 2011.
Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Volume 2.
Scarecrow Press. pp. 101�103. ISBN 978-0-8108-8296-6.
W. Everett, Expression in Pop-rock Music: A Collection of Critical and Analytical
Essays (London: Taylor & Francis, 2000), p. 272.
J. Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Performance and
production (Continuum, 2003), p. 508.
V. Kramarz, The Pop Formulas: Harmonic Tools of the Hit Makers (Mel Bay
Publications, 2007), p. 61.
Winkler, Peter (1978). "Toward a theory of pop harmony", In Theory Only, 4, pp.
3�26.
Sargeant, p. 198. cited in Winkler (1978), p. 4.
Winkler (1978), p. 22.
McGee, Alan (August 20, 2008). "Madonna Pop Art". The Guardian. Retrieved April
17, 2013.
D. Buckley, "Pop" "II. Implications of technology", Grove Music Online, retrieved
15 March 2010.