Underground music is music with practices perceived as outside, or somehow opposed to, mainstream popular music culture. Underground music is intimately tied to popular music culture as a whole, so there are important tensions within underground music because it appears to both assimilate and resist the forms and processes of popular music culture.
A Swedish poster promoting underground music bands
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or "folk" music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller, local audiences.
The 19th century singer Jenny Lind depicted performing La sonnambula
Since the 20th century, several music formats received dominance, from 7-inch vinyl, to 12-inch vinyl, to CDs.
Egyptian pop star Mohamed Mounir
Senegalese rapper Didier Awadi
