CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF DEFINING THE MAINSTREAM OF CONTEMPORARY POPULAR MUSIC IN MUSICIAN RESEARCH
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/art/2025.1.23Keywords:
mainstream, contemporary popular music, definition of mainstream, approaches to definition of mainstream, music of the 21st century, music chart, pop studiesAbstract
Diverse and multi-vector studies devoted to contemporary popular music actualize the problems of the terminology and meanings used in scientific and journalistic papers, which contain definitions in the modern conceptual space. One of the most common concepts used in the discourse of contemporary popular music, in particular, in the first quarter of the 21st century, is the mainstream, the conceptual foundations of which are a relevant area of modern musicological research. The article contains a concise description of the views of various researchers on the meaning of the concept of mainstream in musical art, the relationship between mainstream and contemporary popular music, as well as mainstream and commercial music. The article substantiates the lack of concreteness of the definition of the concept of mainstream in the discourse of contemporary popular music in various scientific sources, which is used: as an attributive appendix that indicates belonging to certain types of popular music (“mainstream hip-hop”, “mainstream rap”, “mainstream rock”, “mainstream modern R&B”, “mainstream EDM-pop”, “mainstream pop” and others); as an evaluative term that illustrates the economic aspects of the music industry (primarily profit-oriented – “commercialism”) that relate to the process; as an indicator of aesthetic depreciation (banality, homogeneity, conformism, etc.); as a sign of market success (chart success). Attention is focused on the coverage of the listening audience in quantitative and geographical dimensions, as well as the role of ratings and charts in the attribution of works to the mainstream of contemporary popular music. A generalization is made regarding the combination of approaches in defining the concept of mainstream contemporary popular music and taking into account the factors of both musical production and production, as well as the perception of musical works in the discourse of the cultural and artistic environment.
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