Musicology Annotation << Back Popular Music as a Product of Mass Culture. A Look Through the Prism of Art Nekrasov Nikolay N. If you think about the role that music plays in everyday life, the answer will be obvious. In the modern era it surrounds us everywhere: in cafes, cinemas, shops, advertisements, TV, smartphones and in cars; it follows life events filled with joy, fun, inspiration, sadness, sorrow, etc. Our soul responds to the music which evokes a wide range of emotions in most people on Earth. But it was not always so. An analysis of the history of musical culture reveals a straight connection between the audience sizes of different eras and the development of world civilization. In the medieval ages, music was mainly performed in churches and cathedrals; during Renaissance and Baroque times music was played in chamber settings at the courts of royal families and nobility, numerous estates of duchies and principalities; the era of classicism and romanticism was the time of active development of musical education, the time of the creation of opera houses, conservatories, music houses, etc., music education became available for larger masses of listeners. Starting from the Modernism era, due to scientific and technological innovations in the field of sound recording and dissemination of information, music has been firmly fixed in the public mind and is now an essential element of mass culture. This article addresses the question whether popular music belongs to the phenomenon of art, identifies its main stylistic categories and reveals the possible aspects of the perception of this musical style as a product of mass culture. Keywords: modern musical culture, popular music, art, mass culture. DOI: 10.25791/musicology.8.2022.1267 Pp. 23-26.