The master's thesis explores the topic of the role of youth and teenage culture in the broader spectrum of mass culture, which is later narrowed down to (mass) popular music or 'mainstream music'. In the first part, a theoretical introduction is presented and a contextualization of teenage music within popular music is outlined. In the second part, two case studies are presented, which are limited to 1) the period 1955–1960, and 2) the emergence of teenage music in the global mainstream in the last decade. Four 'teen pop factories', the influence of adolescents on distribution in the digital age, and the calculation of the share of the music in question in the global mainstream are explained and argued. In the final part, generational music and ageing through one's experience with music acquired in late adolescence (transferring music preferences into adulthood) is addressed.
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