20th century music brought new freedom and wide experimentation with new
musical styles and forms that challenged the accepted rules of music of earlier periods.
The invention of electronic instruments and the synthesizer in the mid-20th century
revolutionized popular music and accelerated the development of new forms of music.
Eastern, Middle-Eastern, Latin and Western sounds began to mix in some forms.
Faster modes of transportation allowed musicians
and fans to travel more widely to perform or listen.
Amplification permitted giant concerts to be heard by those
with the least expensive tickets, and the inexpensive reproduction
and transmission or broadcast of music gave rich and
poor alike nearly equal access to high quality music performances.