The seventies were the years when the Baby Boomers began to have a major cultural impact, introducing new media and hence newer ideas in almost every field. This led to the emergence of a new vocabulary and experimentation in music, as the baby boomers lent their voice to the artistic expression of popular culture.

Musicians began experimenting with music, first with experimental classical music and the tradition of Krautrock or Kraut music, rooted in the experimental classical music. This later influenced both art rock and progressive rock as well as the punk rock and New Wave genres. The main exponents of progressive rock include Genesis, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Pink Floyd. The experimental nature of progressive rock is exemplified in songs such as Pink Floyd's "Echoes". "Metal" was in a very early and experimental state, with British bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath laying the foundation for what is "Metal" today.

One of the first popular music events of the 1970s was the breakup of the Beatles in 1970. Creedence Clearwater Revivial, Simon & Garfunkel and Peter Paul and Mary also went their separate ways, and the demise of the latter two hammered the last nail into the coffin of folk music as a universally embraced music medium.

This "changing of the guard" resulted in the emergence of new sounds dominated by Baby Boomers as opposed to the pre-War generation that dominated the music of the 1960s; many legendary rock bands started, or hit their peak, including ABBA ,Black Sabbath, Queen, Kansas, Boston, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Electric Light Orchestra, Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo, Family, Free, Aerosmith, Badfinger, the Eagles, Kiss, Heart, Rush, The Who, The Doors, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, and Van Halen. In Europe, there was a surge of popularity in the early decade for glam rock, thanks largely to the rise of T. Rex, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Gary Glitter and David Bowie, and bands like Slade and the Sweet.

We also saw the rise of Alternative Pop music with the soft, velvety tones of the brother and sister duo the Carpenters. The group went on to become the biggest selling artists of the decade (1970 & 1980). The first half of the 1970s saw many jazz musicians from the Miles Davis school achieve cross-over success through jazz-rock fusion. Particularly notable were the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, created by Chick Corea, and Weather Report, built upon the keyboards and saxophone of Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, respectively. No European band could rival these American successes, all eventually signed to the CBS label, incidentally. In Germany, Manfred Eicher started the ECM label, which quickly made a name for 'chamber jazz' through the likes of Jan Garbarek, Keith Jarrett and Terje Rypdal. These two movements attracted many fans of progressive rock after its destruction by punk in 1976 & 77.

To many people, the Seventies will be most remembered for the rise in disco music. First creeping into dance clubs in the mid-seventies (with such hits as "The Hustle" by Van McCoy), songstresses like Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Dalida and Anita Ward popularized the genre and were described in subsequent decades as the "disco divas." The Village People scored a Top Ten hit with "Y.M.C.A." and the Bee Gees had a string of No.1s following their collaboration on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

One of the most successful European groups of the decade was the Swedish quartet ABBA. Still the most successful group from their country, they first found fame when they won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. Strongly influenced by the disco beat, they became one of the most widely known European groups ever, and were the decade's biggest sellers. "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen" are two of ABBA's most popular songs.

As quickly as disco's popularity came, however, it fell out of favor with the new decade, and effectively died in 1981, with the popularity of New Wave bands such as Blondie and Devo, who both formed their respective bands in the seventies. Many of the aforementioned singers who became popular during the disco era found themselves out of tune with the 1980s, and were out of work for many years, until a renewed interest in disco brought many of them back to the forefront. Many songs from the disco era are still very popular dance hits and receive continuous airplay in nightclubs throughout the world.

The mid-seventies saw the rise of punk music from its protopunk/garage band roots in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash were some of the earliest acts to make it big in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Groups like the Clash were noted for the experimentation of style, especially that of having strong reggae influences in their music. Punk music has also been heavily associated with a certain punk fashion and absurdist humor which exemplified a genuine suspicion of mainstream culture and values.

Towards the end of the decade, Jamaican reggae music, already popular in the Caribbean and Africa since the early 1970s, became very popular in the U.S. and in Europe, mostly because of reggae superstar and legend Bob Marley as well as his band, The Wailers, his former bandmate Peter Tosh and other artists like Burning Spear and Jimmy Cliff.

Country music remained very popular in the U.S. In 1977 it became more mainstream after Kenny Rogers became a solo singer and scored many hits on both the country and pop charts. He achieved the biggest crossover success ever for the genre (although he would later be replaced by Garth Brooks). Waylon Jennings was very big and Willie Nelson released Red Headed Stranger.

Top music acts in Australia/New Zealand included Sherbet, Skyhooks, Dragon, Hush and the Ted Mulry Gang.