Which is perfectly okay. We're in an age where music production is so accessible that a few talented musicians can make music of better quality than a top "pop band" and sell it with near-zero distribution costs. The production cost of a full album, including paying a talented, professionally trained vocalist, is now down to just a few thousand dollars.

As a result, there's a massive, ever-increasing supply of incredibly high-quality music that never touched a record label. The genre and style are irrelevant.

"Pop artists" these days are now more a matter of selling idols than selling sound. Let the music be made by actual musicians: Justin Bieber and AKB48 were never marketed based on their music to begin with.