Is popular music a mass produced commodity or a genuine art form?

Popular music can in many respects be seen as a mass produced commodity instead of a genuine art form. It is argued that it accentuates similarity, simply selling records that are very similar to one another just because it is guaranteed high revenue. This is unlike european classical music for example which prides itself on having a harmony, melody and on top of this, diversity. Classical music was theorist Theodor Adornos' favorite genre; his opinion of popular music was that it was "standardized, even when when it attempts to circumvent standardization." It was not art to Adorno, merely  "symptomatic of the destructive nature of capitalization." Popular music is mass produced however you can always argue that somebody at some point is being artistic in order to write a song, even if this is not the person performing it; therefore an art form.