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The purpose of this paper is to assist music selectors at academic and public libraries by providing resources useful for selecting popular sound recordings, while emphasizing the ongoing need for monitoring trends and new releases in popular music.

This paper identifies key resources to aid the selection of popular music recordings, beginning with the challenges unique to popular music. The resources are divided into four major sections: online tools, print tools, periodical tools, and staying current.

Popular music is widely collected by libraries, yet selection and acquisition is made difficult by the numerous genres and constant rotation of popular artists and albums. The utilization of a variety of online and print resources is ideal in order to build or maintain a well‐stocked popular music collection.

This paper offers guidance to librarians responsible for sound recordings. No previous discussions of music selection have considered popular music as a whole, while popular music recordings are widely collected by libraries and require a great deal of currency.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify and qualify the commercials in the Super Bowl.

This study is a content analysis of the placement of popular music in Super Bowl advertisements over a ten-year period (2005-2014).

More than a quarter of the commercials analyzed contained popular music. Although the use of popular music in commercials vacillated from year to year, popular music was most often observed in the product category of beverages; the music treatment most often used was original vocals; and song lyrics were most often relevant to the narrative of the commercial, rather than the brand.

This study extends the growing body of Super Bowl advertising research to popular music in commercials and provides a benchmark for all future research in this area.

Previous research suggests that women receive less critical attention and acclaim in popular music. The authors expect that gender differences in the amount and content of media discourse about popular musicians occur because music critics draw on the cultural frame of gender as a primary tool for critical evaluation. In order to explore the role of gender as a frame through which aesthetic content is evaluated, the authors conduct detailed content analyses of 53 critical reviews of two versions of the popular album 1989 – the original released by Taylor Swift in 2014 and a cover version released by Ryan Adams less than a year later. Despite Swift’s greater popularity and prominence, the authors find that reviews of her version of the album are more likely to focus on her gender and sexuality; less likely to describe her as emotionally authentic; and more likely to use popular aesthetic criteria in evaluating her music. By contrast, Ryan Adams was more likely to be seen by critics as emotionally authentic and to be described using high art aesthetic criteria and intellectualizing discourse. The authors address the implications of the findings for persistent gender gaps in many artistic fields.

While Hong Kong has exercised laissez-faire policy with regard to popular cultural industries, such broadcasting freedom may not fully accepted in countries where state control of the media is tight. This paper aims to have a review and brief discussion on music development and the phenomenon of popular music censorship under Chinese societies including China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

After a brief discussion on the popular music scene in Hong Kong, China and Singapore, this paper reviews on the possible reasons for popular music censorship issue in the Chinese societies.

It is found that Canto-pop can be freely broadcast in Hong Kong; however, such freedom is not accepted in China and Singapore due to censorship. While China is sensitive to pro-democratic content in popular music, Singapore's language policies hinder the development of Canto-pop since the 70s.

After reviewing the reasons for music censorship, in particular Cantonese popular music in the Chinese societies, the paper gives a prediction on the future development of Canto-pop.