Its hard for me to say that popularity doesnt change the value or creativity of whats becoming popular whether it be a song or movie or artist, etc. I think that something becoming popular is completly contextual and has really nothing to do with the artist/creator however there is a large backlash. The cultures and offspring that come with the glamourization and popularity of a lot things in the media do tend to get watered down the bigger and more common they become. i think that a lot of popular or "top 40" music (or whatever its called) suffers this the most as do large box office movies catered to these patrons. In the digital age the mass media is in nowadays has an automatic audience before anything is to come out. bands being signed/created before they have done anything, movie stars bigger than life before there first movie comes out, clothes, styles/ fashion are all examples of this nonsense.
However, i do not feel that because something gets popular it automaticly gets downsized to something less creative. i keep thinking of the "a million people cant be wrong" idea with this but i dont agree entirely. if you can make a million people listen to your song and buy it its hard to argue with. however, so much is created now specifically for that which i feel is totally wrong. these things are which in my opinion, give the mass media and popular cultures a bad name because you are hyping something that was made to appeal to 10000000 people and thats it. an artist or musician or whatever who creates something they believe in and and it becomes popularized has done something great, regardless if i like it or not. i feel that the contextual nature of popularity in these forms has to be read by the individual and enterprted and sepreated from whether its art or just popularized for the sake money or anything else that corrupts the industries this way.