You may think it's pedantic, but in this case it's a significant distinction.

"popular music" != "pop music"

The term "popular music" is an umbrella for music that has "wide appeal" and associated with "large audiences" [0] -- i.e. it's a statistical term.

It can apply to many "genres" (that's the music industry term, rather than categories).

One of those genres[1] is "pop music"[2]. And after your clarification, I now assume your OP actually meant "pop music".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_music [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_genre [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_music