Popular Music Again, Maybe

This essay topic is very broad so I'm not sure if this really applies or not, but I'm thinking of a question something along the lines of “Here in the West, how do we define pop music and how do other genres of music bleed into that genre?” or something of that sort. Popular music obviously has a link to popular culture because it's... well, popular. I feel like I know enough about pop music, but more importantly I want to focus on other music that is not considered pop, but it popular anyway (which I know a bit about as well). If I had to respond to this question right now, I suppose I would delve into catchy song structures, choruses, and melodies the way I meant to in my previous presentation for the class concerning popular music. I would say that as long as a song has a catchy chorus it has potential to become popular. However, what is it about some non-pop artists that allows them to rank high in the top 100? I have more rock/metal/grunge artists in mind, but I could be even more specific and mention all genres of artists that aren't classified as pop. I would definitely need to do more research on that.

Soundcloud

As we have discussed, new media can be described as methods of sending messages through various media using technology. However, we have not gone into much detail about what forms these messages can take. Generally, when we think about messages being sent, we naturally think of written word, which makes sense. There are other forms though, such as images and sounds, particularly music. Soundcloud.com is a useful site for musicians to post their music to the internet for free, and it is a great tool for discovering and for being discovered. Soundcloud is somewhat similar to sites like Instagram, but with emphasis on music rather than pictures.

Soundcloud is a site for people to share the music they create, and they can choose to make that music private or public, downloadable or not, free or not, and they can have followers and/or people that follow them. Some of these features are similar to other sites such as Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc., but with an emphasis on music rather than some other form of art or even personal thoughts or opinions. There is an option to add a description to a piece of music being uploaded, and anything could be said within it, but this description is only visible to those who actively open the sound and look at its page.