What defines 'real music'

[Fynn]

My twelve years of musical education, as well as that of my girlfriend (who is studying musicology at the moment) tell me that the definition of "music" differs greatly between various cultures. Heck, some peoples don't even have a word for it! But on topic, it's true that there's music and there's music. I have also been criticised for listening moslty to vgm soundtracks, but it came from my girlfriend. I understand where she's coming from - she's basically against popular music as a whole, since she finds value only in artistic music. While videogame music is miles better than the pop stuff most people consider "real" music, it still cannot be classified as "high" music. It's good if it's not the only thing you listen to. I took her advice and listened to some 20th century Polish artistic music. Some dodecaphonic and aleatoric pieces are still a bit hard to swallow (though some sound awesome), there are many beautiful pieces (I advise you guys to look for Henryk Górecki's symphony of sorrowful songs, or whatever it's called in English).

I see that the main difference between contemporary artistic and popular music (which is the only distinction that I consider close to the "real" and "fake" stuff) is that the latter is meant to sound nice and be catchy, the former usually aims at something more, something higher. Consequently, it often requires some background reading...