It would be wrong to think that the word "pop" is a simple abbreviation of the term "popular music", although their root is the same. Popular music existed before the pop business. I tend to refer to popular music everything that, for one reason or another, became known to almost all listeners, regardless of their degree of preparedness and the type of music itself. This is what has gained recognition of the masses, people, population (from the Latin word "popularis" - folk, useful to the people). It is as if a cross-section passing through many genres and covering all the most popular in a certain period of time: works, performers, authors. Thus, the field of popular music includes not only favorite songs from movies, not only fashionable dances, romances, folk songs. There are also military marches, the most understandable and vivid jazz melodies, arias from operas and operettas and even some samples of chamber and symphonic music. Popular music is something that has settled down in the minds of ordinary people who are not connoisseurs or even amateurs, without any effort on his part. Everybody knows the beginning of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, Oginsky's polonaise, Duke Ellington's romance Eyes of Black, Caravan, Slavyanka's Farewell march, Rigoletto's Aria, Silva's Aria. This is actually "popular music".
And "pop" is quite another, it is a product of the music business, which has grown on a wave of rhythm and blues and rock and roll. It can not always refer to the concept of "popular music", taking into account the tastes of people conservative or just the elderly. Thus, "popular music", "rock" and "pop" are not adequate concepts, as it is sometimes imagined by some musicologists and critics, not to mention a simple man in the street. Rock music in the process of its development, along with popular examples, has given rise to its own elitist sphere, which is inaccessible and therefore uninteresting to the mass audience.
The practice of pop-business was a prerequisite for the emergence of a number of new phenomena, new types of social activity, new professions. Instead of the usual universal administrator of the old model, the fate ofperformers began to be engaged in producers, that is, people who invest their money and dictate everything - repertoire, style of orchestration, image and much more. The role of managers of different types involved in the organization of all stages of the production process of "goods" has increased. No less important was the role of promoters ("pushers") responsible for advertising, for the so-called "publicity", for the sale of goods. And this product was not just individual hits. The status of goods in the pop business constantly changed. They made themselves performers, bands, styles and even directions of pop music.
The new era of pop business has brought about changes in the relationship between "stars" and producers. Gradually, artists began to fall into increasing dependence on those who held in their hands all the levers of control of a complex machine music and entertainment industry. The masters of the situation were the producers of a new type. Quite often they came from the environment of composers-arrangements, authors of hits. The outdated Tin Rap Alley music publishing empire was overshadowed by the success of a number of new masters of the "song industry", the most influential of whom were Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. These co-authors wrote songs back in the early 50's for performers such as Ben King and Joe Turner, for "Drifters" and "Coasted", for Elvis Presley himself. It was Lieber and Stoller who were among the first to find the synthesis of a vocal group with string, drum and Latin American instruments, setting the standard for the studio sound of a pop band for many years. In New York City, a whole range of young authors serving the new and successful publishing house "Aldon Music" was formed. Neil Sedaka and Howl Greenfield, Barry Mann and Cynthia Wale, Jerry Keller, Jerry Goffin, and Carol King, among others, are the protégés of Liberty and Stoller, Phil Spector. He became famous for the quality of his recordings, the new sound he called "the wall of sound". Spector himself jokingly referred to himself as "Wagner in pop music." "All I do are little symphonies for teenagers,"he said. Phil Spector's approach to studio work has had a significant impact on the development of pop and rock music on the west coast of the U.S., especially in Los Angeles, where his ideas were primarily used by the band "Beach Boys".