Though it is often marketed as Volksmusik, it differs from traditional folk music in that it is commercially performed by celebrity singers and concentrates on newly created sentimental and cheerful feel-good compositions.
Volkstümliche Musik is sometimes instrumental, but usually presented by one or especially two singers and is most popular amongst an adult audience in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and also in South Tyrol (Italy), Alsace-Moselle (France), Netherlands, Flanders (Belgium), Slovenia, Silesia (Poland) and northern Croatia.
Brass and Alpine musical instruments, such as Alphorns, Zithers, acoustic guitars, violas, and harmonicas are frequently featured, although most commercial productions nowadays employ drum machines and synthesizers.
Volkstümliche Musik was influenced by Flower Power songs as well as by popular classical pieces during the 1970s and has been increasingly mingled with schlager music, promoted by successful singers like Heino serving as a model for performers like Die Flippers, Andy Borg or Kristina Bach.
Not unlike schlager, Volkstümliche Musik is often belittled by younger or more sophisticated audiences as a massively commercialized product created for the lower strata of society, conveying idyllic, reactionary, irrational ideas.