In the foreword to the first issue of Popular Music and Society, published in 1971, Ray B. Browne wrote that, ‘until very recently … academics, with a few notable exceptions, were by and large indifferent to the role of popular music in their world’; he then recounted a rejection he had received from an academic journal, whose editor had written that, ‘although this might be interesting, we both had to admit that popular songs really had no academic significance’. Today, exactly fifty years later, the position of popular music studies within the academy is far removed from Browne's experience: there are multiple academic journals and scholarly press book series devoted solely to popular music, scholars regularly present papers on popular music topics at academic conferences, and departments across colleges and universities offer an increasingly wide variety of popular music courses. Popular music has even become a viable area of interest within music scholarship.

中文翻译：

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展望未来：流行音乐研究和音乐奖学金

在第一期的前言中流行音乐与社会，于 1971 年出版，Ray B. Browne 写道，“直到最近……学术界，除了少数值得注意的例外，基本上对流行音乐在他们的世界中的作用漠不关心”；然后他讲述了他从一家学术期刊收到的拒绝，该期刊的编辑写道，“虽然这可能很有趣，但我们都不得不承认流行歌曲确实没有学术意义”。五十年后的今天，流行音乐研究在学院内的地位与布朗的经历相去甚远：有多种学术期刊和学术新闻丛书专门针对流行音乐，学者们定期在学术会议上发表关于流行音乐主题的论文，各学院和大学的部门提供越来越广泛的流行音乐课程。