Popular music isn't about music.
At least, not always...
Since Elvis Presley arrived and unwittingly built the massive media circus around his personal flair, wholesome image and shocking stage antics, Popular music has been about the package.
You could create great music, but if you looked like a dork and had unstylish artwork on your album covers, you wouldn't sell much - it's a product.
The Sex Pistols summed it up very well with their 3 albums, "Never Mind...", "Some Product" and "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle". The latter informs you, the music buyer, that you are being conned not only by the Record Industry, but by them, the Sex Pistols, into buying the piece of junk that you are listening to. Genius.
If a packaged product makes money for a record company, they provide whatever resource is necessary to keep the goose laying the golden eggs: Stables of young studs and basements full of musical prostitutes - professional songwriters and session musicians. Record companies spend millions making sure that radio stations only play from their selections, and that the charts contain recordings on their labels.
Payola still exists - only it's more sophisticated these days. The radio station boss needs a new laptop? Certainly, sir - and would sir mind playing the latest CD from band X who aren't doing so well these days - once an hour will do.
Fortunately there are people who want to create and make a living from creating music that they enjoy, rather than a product they can flog to the punters.
Prog Rock artists of the past certainly fell into this category with their earliest albums, as did avante-garde jazz musicians, and there are still admirable musicians like this today - not just in prog rock, but in most genres.
On the other side of the fence, most people don't want to listen to music - they want to hear it. They don't want to work at it and they don't want surprises, but just want it nice and predictable to suit the moods they're in. In other words, they require a product. To them, a product can be a great work of art, like Beethoven or Dark Side of the Moon, or something with a nice tune, words that mean something to them, or a lead singer they fancy.
Sadly, to some purists, the adoption of art by the masses means that the art loses status.
Fortunately for the rest of us, great art always remains great art - and only time can prove a piece of music to be a "hit" - something for the moment, of little worth, and forgotten within a few years - or a lasting vision.
/must be time for my dried frog pills... 
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