Is Popular music a mass produced commodity or a genuine art form?

Theodor Adorno believed that popular music was a mass produced commodity. He said that “the whole structure of popular music is standardized”. He believed that it couldn’t be justified any other way. Adorno’s believe was that popular music was produced by the capitalist society in order to create profit and to keep audiences passive. He said popular music was too simplistic and compared it to classical music which he saw as a form of art. Whilst it is true that popular music is produced to the masses, it could be argued that it is a form of art because it something created by an artist to express a feeling. Gendrom criticises Adorno’s theory saying that you can’t mass produce a song because it’s a recording of a moment in time. So, whilst Adorno has a point that popular music is massed produced, he focuses on the industry making profit and not at how and why the artists create the music. Popular music could be considered as an art form as it privileges popular criteria, whilst Adorno’s example of classical music only appeals to a smaller, more selective audience.