- Light Music Hall of Fame – A textual tribute to light orchestral music from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Features biographical information on the top composers, arrangers, and orchestrators; lists of their songs and links to other sources.
- Robert Farnon Society – For fans of light music, including a guide to composers such as Leroy Anderson, Percy Faith and Andre Kostelanetz.
- Easy Listening Music – Music in real audio intended for easy listening while you browse the web or wish to relax.
- Global Suitcase Musical Recordings – Free MP3 songs including smooth jazz, ambient, acoustic instrumentals.
- Muzak – Founders of piped music and the science of how music affects the behavior of customers.
- Space Age Pop Music – An online encyclopedia of exotica, lounge, space age pop, and easy listening music.
- Val Productions – Independent label with easy listening instrumental music featuring various artists. English, French, and Japanese sites.
- Billy Andrusco – Recordings with styles ranging from light classical to pop with fully orchestrated arrangements.
- Chris Spheeris – «Exotic, energetic, melodic» music combining guitar and sax with instruments from around the world.
- Combs Music – Several recordings of music written by Dave Combs and performed by Gary Prim. Sheet music and a 3-D music video.
- Daniel Ho – Slack Key Guitar – Features numerous albums, mp3 samples, ordering information, and related links.
- Francis Chicheportiche – Paris-born composer and songwriter’s premier album «OZ» features a blend of ethnic instruments and ambient sounds.
- Guitarpro – Recordings of acoustic/electric guitar styles and sounds including pop, rock, classical, light jazz, blues, mor, neuvo-flamenco, and country.
- Hiko Music – New Age / classical piano from international recording artist. Biography, recordings, booking information.
- Jesse Garza – Acoustic Dream – San Antonio, TX local musician. A blend of soft easy listening jazz and Spanish/Latin music.
Easy listening music is a style of popular music which emerged in the mid-20th century. Around 1980, it was the most listened to radio format in America, although it soon became scarce as a format not because its listeners were too few but because they were getting too old and therefore less desirable for radio advertisers. This type of music features simple, catchy melodies, cool, laid-back harmonies and occasionally rhythms suitable for dancing. While it is mostly instrumental music, some singers, such as Andy Williams, Jack Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Eydie Gorme had vocal styles which were highly compatible with this style. Much of the work of some other pop vocalists, including Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, and Mel Torme was too frenetic or swing-oriented to be played in an easy listening format. Beautiful music is a subset of easy listening music, since as a radio format it had rigid standards for instrumentation (e.g., few or no saxophones) and restrictions on how many vocal pieces could be played in an hour. Its sometimes called Nostalgia music.
The term has sometimes been applied negatively in the years since this format went out of fashion. It is similar to what is called «lounge» or «lounge core», but lounge music is much more jazz-oriented and dependent on improvisation than easy listening. Easy listening music is almost always orchestrated and is more analogous to classical music than to jazz. Since easy-listening music is rather unknown to the younger generations, the term easy listening is often incorrectly applied to soft pop, Smooth Jazz or new age music. Easy listening music is also sometimes known as «mood music» or «MOR», or more pejoratively as «Muzak» or «elevator music».
Adult contemporary music is a much more hip form of Easy Listening and is one of the top radio formats in the USA today.
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