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. Before the 1880s, music was largely passed along orally or performed for smaller, local audiences, but 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, middle-class music-makers. These individuals could play and sing popular music at home, often centering their efforts around the piano, an instrument capable of playing melodies, chords, and basslines simultaneously. This shift transformed music from a communal or ceremonial activity into a private commodity that could be purchased and consumed within the domestic sphere. One of the early popular music performers to attain widespread popularity was a Swedish opera singer named Jenny Lind, who toured the United States in the mid-19th century, helping to fuel the demand for her sheet music. The center of this burgeoning music publishing industry in the United States during the late 19th century was New York's Tin Pan Alley district, where publishers developed a new method for promoting sheet music through incessant promotion of new songs. By the early 1900s, big trends in popular music included the increasing popularity of vaudeville theaters and dance halls, alongside a new invention known as the player piano. A player piano could record a skilled pianist's rendition of a piano piece and play it back on another player piano, allowing a larger number of music lovers to hear the new popular piano tunes. The record industry grew very rapidly, and by 1920 there were almost 80 record companies in Britain and almost 200 in the USA, enabling a larger percentage of the population to hear the top singers and bands.
The Rise of the Record Era
Radio broadcasting of music, which began in the early 1920s, helped to spread popular songs to a huge audience, enabling a much larger proportion of the population to hear songs performed by professional singers and music ensembles, including individuals from lower income groups who previously would not have been able to afford concert tickets. This technology increased the ability of songwriters, singers, and bandleaders to become nationally known, while the introduction of talking pictures or sound films in the late 1920s further disseminated music and songs. 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. By the 1950s and 1960s, the new invention of television began to play an increasingly important role in disseminating new popular music, with variety shows regularly showcasing popular singers and bands. The development of new technologies in recording, such as multitrack recorders, gave sound engineers and record producers an increasingly important role in popular music. By using multitrack recording techniques, sound engineers could create new sounds and sound effects that were not possible using traditional live recording techniques, such as singers performing their own backup vocals or having lead guitarists play rhythm guitars behind their guitar solo. 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 (WEA, RCA, CBS) and two European-owned companies (EMI, Polygram). In the 1990s, the consolidation trend took a new turn with inter-media consolidation, seeing 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 conglomerate's television talk shows and magazine arms.
The introduction of digital equipment, including mixing desks, synthesizers, samplers, and sequencers, in the 1980s resulted in what the 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. In the 1990s, the availability of sound recording software and effects units software meant that an amateur indie band could record an album, which required a fully equipped recording studio in previous decades, using little more than a laptop and a good quality microphone. While the audio quality of modern recording studios still outstrips what an amateur can produce, the democratization of recording technology allowed for a explosion of diverse voices. In the 2000s, with songs and pieces available as digital sound files, it has become easier for music to spread from one country or region to another. Some popular music forms have become global, while others have a wide appeal within the culture of their origin. Through the mixture of musical genres, new popular music forms are created to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of Africa, Indonesia, and the Middle East show how Western pop music styles can blend with local musical traditions to create new hybrid styles. This digital shift also changed the economics of music consumption, as artists are now paid per individual stream, and longer songs could mean fewer streams, leading to a trend where songs have shortened again, partially due to the ubiquity of streaming.
The Structure of Song
Form in popular music is most often sectional, the most common sections being verse, chorus or refrain, and bridge. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different music for each stanza of the lyrics, a style known as through-composed. The verse and chorus are considered the primary elements, with each verse usually having the same melody, possibly with some slight modifications, but the lyrics changing for most verses. The chorus or refrain usually has a melodic phrase and a key lyrical line which is repeated. Pop songs may have an introduction and coda or tag, but these elements are not essential to the identity of most songs. Pop songs that use verses and choruses often have a bridge, 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, where 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, such as a guitarist or a harmonica player, or less commonly, more than one instrumentalist, such as a trumpeter and a sax player. 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.
The Shift in Tempo and Mood
In addition to many changes in specific sounds and technologies used, there has been a shift in the content and key elements of popular music since the 1960s. One major change is that popular music has gotten slower, with the average BPM of popular songs from the 1960s being 116, while the average of the 2000s was 100 BPM. Additionally, songs getting radio play in the 1960s were, on average, only about three minutes long, whereas most of the songs in the Billboard Top 5 in 2018 were between 3:21 and 3:40 minutes long. There has also been a drop in the use of major keys and a rise in the use of minor keys since the 1960s, with 85% of songs being in a major key in that decade, while only around 40% of songs are in a major key now. The subject matter and lyrics of popular music have also undergone major change, becoming sadder as well as more antisocial and self-centered since the 1960s. There has also been an increasing trend of songs' emotional content, key, and tempo not following common associations, for example, fast songs with sad subject matters or in a minor key, or slow songs with happier content or in a major key. One reason for the brevity of songs in the past was the physical capability of records, as vinyl record singles, which were heavily favored for radio play, only had room for about three minutes of music. With the invention of CDs in 1982, and more recently with streaming, music can be as long or short as both writers and listeners wish, yet songs have shortened again, partially due to the ubiquity of streaming, with the average song length in 2018 being 3 minutes and 30 seconds, 20 seconds shorter than the average in 2014.
The Global Hybridization
In contrast to Western popular music, genres of music that originated outside of the West are often categorized as world music, a label that turns otherwise popular styles of music into an exotic and unknown category for Western audiences. New media technology has led urban music styles to filter into distant rural areas across the globe, and the rural areas, in turn, are able to give feedback to the urban centers about the new styles of music. Urbanization, modernization, exposure to foreign music and mass media have contributed to hybrid urban pop styles. The hybrid styles have also found a space within Western popular music through the expressions of their national culture. Recipient cultures borrow elements from host cultures and alter the meaning and context found in the host culture. In Africa, popular music styles have stemmed from traditional entertainment genres, rather than evolving from music used with certain traditional ceremonies like weddings, births, or funerals. The genre of music, Maskanda, is popular in its culture of origin, South Africa, and a popular maskandi artist, Phuzekhemisi, had to lessen the political influence within his music to be ready for the public sphere. His music producer, West Nkosi, was looking for the commercial success in Phuzekhemisi's music rather than starting a political controversy. Political songs have been an important category of African popular music in many societies, and during the continent's struggle against colonial rule, nationalistic songs boosted citizens' morale. In Indonesia, the genre of music Dangdut formed from two other genres of popular music: indo pop and underground music coming together to create a new fusion genre. Dangdut takes the noisy instrumentation from underground music, but makes it easier to listen to, like indo pop, and has formed into a larger social movement that includes clothing, youth culture, the resurgence of Islam, and the capitalist entertainment industry.
The Voice of Resistance
In the Middle East, modernization of music in the Arab world involved borrowing inspiration from Turkish music and Western musical styles. The late Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum stated, We must respect ourselves and our art, discussing why Egypt and the Arab world needed to take pride in the popular music styles originating in their culture so the styles were not lost in the modernization. Local musicians learned Western instrumental styles to create their own popular styles including their native languages and indigenous musical features. Through the 1980s and 1990s, popular music has been seen as a problem for the Iranian government because of the non-religious meanings within the music and the bodily movements of dancing or headbanging. During this time period, metal became a popular underground subculture through the Middle East, and Iranian underground rock bands are composed of members who are young, urban-minded, educated, relatively well-off, and global beings. The youth who take part in underground music in the Middle East are aware of the social constraints of their countries, but they are not optimistic about social change. Iranian rock bands have taken up an internationalist position to express their rebellion from the discourses in their national governments. In the contemporary United States, one of the most popular forms of music is rap, with DJ Kool Herc known for creating hip-hop itself in the 1970s. With the technique he created when mixing two identical records back and forth, he was able to make unique-sounding sounds that later gave birth to rap itself. In modern times, rap is used to bring awareness to problems such as racism and sexism, developing communities in a culture regarding music. In China, a 2015 study involving young students in Shanghai showed that youths enjoyed listening to both Chinese, other Asian nationalities, and Anglo-American popular music, with three ways that young people of China were able to access global music including policy changes since the late 1970s, the broadcast of television shows from neighboring Asian societies and the West, and the impact of the internet and smartphones on the accessibility of streaming music.