The "Willma Poppen Project", or simply "Willma Poppen" is a musicproject which was founded in 2008 by Juergen Wolther (alionsonny) and some friends out of the idea, if one can become rich and famous by producing the most mass compatible pop music with pleasing melodies and grooves. At this fateful evening at group of approximately 20 people met in a private chatroom. This was the result of a discussion at the forum of a german IT-magazine, during which alionsonny claimed that today one can only become rich and famous asd a musician, if he produces nothing than very simple and mass compatible popmusic. Some of the members of the discussion agreed and some strongly disagreed. A heated discussion evolved out of that atmosphere, which ended because too much postings were deleted, because the administrator had a bad-hair-day or simply because too many personal insults were thrown from each side. I t ended in that the core of the discussion contributors moved to a private chat, where they discussed until the early morning about the state of culture and the music industry. One person suggested, that if it was so easy to become rich and famous with simple popmusic, one should simply try it. This (ca. 4:30 am) was the hour when the "Willma Poppen Project" was born. The project is a so called open community project, which simply means, that each and everybody may contribute to it with ideas or practical work. Currently most ofthe project contributers contribute consulting and ideas how exactly the 100% mass compatible popsong sounds like. alionsonny has, as allways, allways the last word and is mostly the musician who puts it all together and produces the tracks. The goal/aim of the project is, to get at least one song into the top ten of the charts without any help of the music industry. If this should fail, it is (so says the founding protocol) an evidence for another thesis which had been elaborated during the night of the projects founding: The music industry with its financial power on the prmotion and advertising sector prevents musicians who have no contract with them for stepping up in the charts. No matter how mass compatible and/or good the music is, no matter how big the fanbase is. A musician cannot be really successfull without signing a contract with one of the big labels in the music industry. So the "Willma Poppen Project" is an experiment in media science. It aims for nothing less than to determine how the entertainment industry works and fails these days. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.