There were many types of music during the time of Beethoven, he himself embodied at least three distinct styles; Viennese classicism (early), heroic (middle), quartets, chamber and solo (late).

Maybe leave the empty inaccurate quips to other forums?

No, it was not. Well, kind of depends of what you mean by “back then”. But the term classical music is not a modern creation talking about old music.

The term was created while people were creating this genre of music. Classical originally was meant to refer to things from Antique Rome. But, unlike other art forms, like literature and sculpture, no music from Antique Rome survived, no one knew how it sounded.

This kind of created the opportunity to redefine what “classical” meant in music, so a few people decide, centuries ago, that this genre of music would be called “classical” at that time already, not now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music

On the contrary, instrumental concert music was a relatively new phenomenon and many people considered it inferior to vocal music or even called it empty noise. The idea that Classical symphonies or sonatas were the popular music of that era is completely wrong. See https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalmusik (sorry, German only).

There was always plenty of folk music, which I guess would be comparable to popular music nowadays.