I agree that SOME pop artistes are in it for the sole purpose of making money. Mostly these are bands or artistes that have been created by the "Cowell machine" or similar.

However, that doesn't mean that ALL popular music was written purely for the purpose of making money, nor that many of the artistes making pop music haven't "earned their stripes" through an apprenticeship playing small venues, pubs and clubs.

What I was objecting to up-thread, and still am, is the trashing of whole categories or genres by blanket comments such as "it's all noise" or "it's all just crap produced for commercial purposes". That's simply narrow-minded bigotry.

I've seen many young bands, songwriters and singers developing....some go a more "folky" route, some into rap or hip-hop, some into indie-rock and some into commercial pop. These people almost all have at their root a common love of music and are absolutely not thinking solely (or in many cases at all) about "making loads of money". Most, even some very talented ones, don't "make it" commercially at all. Some have limited local success, some develop a bit of a nationwide (or even international) cult following, and a very tiny minority actually make it commercially.

To give a pertinent example. One band I've seen develop over the last 5 year or so is Elijah Wolf's "Gravity Drive"....basically himself and his wife Ava plus a couple of supporting musicians. Elijah writes catchy "art-poppy" songs and tunes....not because he thinks they'll sell, but because that's "what comes out of my head". He's a tireless worker, running open mic sessions in several towns in Devon and Dorset, and just has an immense love of music in many forms. He encourages people with initially low self-confidence to perform, he helps other people to refine their songs. Plays local paying gigs with the band whenever he can.

He's had a couple of songs picked up as "background" music on a soap opera, and the band finally self-recorded and released their own album late last year. He's been advised to go solo for a "better chance of commercial success" as individual singer-songwriters are "in" at present, but won't (and I do actually prefer his solo acoustic versions of many of his songs, personally). But the band's his thing.

After 5 years of hard work, the band's getting regular airplay on Radio 2 and 6 Music. Janice Long plays them a lot, as does Tom Robinson, and they've just done a live session with "Whispering Bob Harris". They MAY be on the brink of a modest commercial success.

But even if they become huge, the thing that drives Elijah and Ava isn't the prospect of making money, but their sheer joy in and love of making music and performing live. What they do might be quite "poppy" and it might not be to your taste, but to just lump them in a whole category as "being in it purely to make loads of money" is hugely bigoted IMO, and doing a great disservice to the many people operating in the pop genre who *are* doing it for love of music (albeit of a type of music you personally might dislike).