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PurposeThe term “Brazilian popular music” refers to a varied repertoire of musical styles with a strong connection to local culture. The initiatives of representation of this domain of interest occur through adaptations of generic models and strategies coming from contexts and musical styles that differ from the essential characteristics of the national music. The purpose of this paper is to present a characterization of Brazilian popular music as a conceptual model which supports the communication and analysis of this domain and serves as a reference ontology for various applications in the field of Information Science and others.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the purpose, a mapping about Brazilian popular music was done from a literature review and a data collection with expert users, based on domain analysis theory. From this characterization, the conceptual model was built using an Ontology Engineering approach. To facilitate understanding, the results were described using a more user-friendly notation.FindingsThe paper presents a conceptual model as a first semantic reference on Brazilian popular music that serves (1) to better understand, communicate and analyze the domain of Brazilian popular music and, (2) to supply some semantic aspects not covered by the adaptations that have been proposed on the literature for musical representation.Originality/valueThe paper adds a new perspective to the understanding of Brazilian popular music and open opportunity to explore other repertoires about popular music.