Does Pop Have Longevity?

Pop music, at least pop music now ("now" entailing the consolidation of the channels of distribution and the stranglehold that the Top 40-style singles have on radio airplay, along with the broadening of music distribution offered by the internets—a paradoxical intensification of the very most popular songs' popularity along with a growing, diverse array of popular songs that don't make it on the radio at all), seems to be fairly backward-looking on the macro scale—record labels, like movie studios, don't necessarily want to bet large on left-field artists—while being incredibly rich and interesting on the micro level.

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