It seems that music seems to be getting worse over time since the creation of pop music. I am having a big debate with my friends as to why classical music is better than pop, can you help me think of some points to shut them down? Thanks!

I completely agree with you, without being able to give any reasonable explanation. Most pop music hurts my ears and drives me crazy .... but why ?

it is ritcher in quality

Well the pop music singers are often untalented with stacks of voice edit and electronic noices to hide their crapiness

I agree with that, (ab)use of electronics normally doesn´t make things better. Anyhow I feel it´s kind of a difficult discussion that I normally avoid ... it seems somewhat like discussing religious topics, normally you won´t get any further with it.

Good point,

especially as there is such a thing as good pop music, imo the Beatles, Queen and some other bands have been examples of that. I admit it's very hard for me to find a suitable example from present times, but I guess one would have to look somewhere else than in the light of the heavily promoted bands which may be found in the charts most of the time.

The main reason I'm not good at finding examples is that most of the time I myself listen to classical music and have always done so - I even made it my profession. Still, I long since dropped the attempt to prove it is in any way superior, not least because I suspect that this general verdict simply isn't true

Well the points I made to my friends were that:

• Bach (the god of music) and all those classical composers were the backbone and guite simply the inventors of music and they had a much more profound understanding of the music itself.
• Classical music is very diverse and covers a wide range of styles and instruments unlike the cliche rock band with guitar and drums.
• Peopl who only listen to pop music probably don't have any idea what they're listening to, that is, the harmonic progression, shape of the phrase etc. Pop music always uses the same old lame chords over and over again. 
• Shostakovich is the rock musician of classical, except that he's a million times better.
• And last but not least, I've actually managed to convert 2 (yes 2) of my friends to classical music by telling them to listen to the Bach Orchestral suite in D Major Air, which in my opinion is the greatest piece of music ever written. Less is more!

But for some reason, they always counter with:

• Classical music is boring, it doesn't catch my attention. 
• We should be listening to the music of today not yesterday.

ARGHHH!!!!!! Stuff them!

Queen, Beatles. They are classified as rock. The music 'pop' is a sub-category of rock.

basically when i say pop, i mean modern music in general

Oeps ... what happened to Nxf7?

Popular music lacks the four elements of what I call serious music, viz rhythm, melody, harmony, and development. Sure, it has rhythm (does it ever!), most of it has harmony, some of it has a nice melody, but none that I've ever heard has development. It is a matter of repeating the same phrase, the same rhythm, the same words over and over and over again without going anywhere with it. Listen to any serious music and you will find all four elements there. Unfortunately, most people (at least in America) don't have enough of an attention span to listen that long and thus they are satisfied with the rhythm, melody, harmony, but no development. That's my humble opinion, anyway.

Oh, I also want to add that in popular music, the voice is distorted and sounds like grunts or screeches or yelling. Pop singer rely on the microphone to carry their voices. Listen to any good opera or lied singer -- never do they have a microphone. Even in a soft aria, their voices carry to the far corners of the largest hall. Now THAT's singing!

Very well spoken, Anda!