This feels about right - I know enough to be dangerous, but have neither the time nor the energy to navigate the wide-open spectrum of all the music out there…
Radio is only a good source for commercials these days; if that’s what you’re going by for new music, you will be sorely disappointed. Our source for new music is David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, and you guys here recommending stuff. There is tons of good stuff going around now - very creative, interesting, gorgeous stuff. The internet has cracked music wide open, but radio hasn’t got the message yet.
Here’s my (getting more dated all the time) current-ish song list for old-ish farts. 
Only as a monthly feature of my blog.
wow, that’s some list. I have a few of those on my I-pod, so perhaps we share a similar taste. I’m going to check out some of the ones I don’t have. I’ve had money on apple for several months, but can’t find anything to spend it on.
Yeah, maybe some new music.
I’m happy to say that only two of the artists listed are in my music library, and they’ve both been around for decades (Santana, U2). When Jefferson Airplane put out something new, wake me up. 
I don’t think not just every music/musician who “makes it” are good; there are incredible amount of great music out there (I know this because I’m a hack musician and/but knows a lot of great musicians). There are so many avenues to release your music these days it’s beyond the scope of what I can scan once over. It wasn’t quite like this before; I always had a pretty good knowledge of just about everything in record stores and beyond.
I’m 37 and I don’t think I ever did. For a brief moment in the mid 90s what I was listening to because a bit mainstream, but that’s about it. Not that I go out of my way to listen to less-popular music - and even then it isn’t THAT unusual music and I don’t look down on others for listening to mainstream - it has just worked out that way.
Well, I know the difference between the Decemberists and Arcade Fire, so I’m not totally out of touch. (Late 50s.) Having a 4 year old has meant a lot less listening to the radio, and a lot more listening to kid-friendly music, though.
I’m 42. I have a teenage son and I teach teenagers, so I absorb some current music by osmosis, but I don’t make an effort to keep up.
41, and yes. Every month I make a mix CD of the best new songs that came out that month to share with my friends. It’s almost exclusively indie stuff, though - I don’t know much of what’s going on in the top 40.
I was doing pretty good for a short while there. We had a new local radio station that played 90s alternative music interspersed with new music that people who like 90s alternative would like (Arcade Fire, Black Keys, Panic!, Airborne Toxic Event, etc) so I got exposed to new music that way.
But now that station is gone. Replaced with sports talk (srsly) and now there’s nowhere for people like me to go on the radio. So yeah I’m back to just listening to my CD collection.
I do pick up info here and there. I’m not ignorant to Jay Z or Kanye or Lady Gaga, but I don’t know many if any of their songs. I look stuff up.
But “follow” or “intentionally keep up with”? Nah.
I do watch both episodes of Pop Up Video every day now so I am filling in the gaps when it comes to my knowledge of pop music.
I’m 32.
A socially conscious Hip-Hop artist, actor and poet who has been invited to the White House for poetry readings, causing the Right to have a conniption about one of his poems.
A Google search for the word “common” brought up his Wikipedia page as the first result.
Same here.
I also shoot concerts by various School of Rock locations. They usually do “Classic Rock” shows, but the Kansas City one has done tributes to “21st Century Rock” and “Alternative Rock”. So the first time I ever heard a Lady Gaga song, it was sung by a ten year old.
I voted yes, but I’m not completely sure what you’re looking for. If you were to ask me about a mainstream artist, then unless they somehow bleed into other news or other media, I have no idea who they are. However, I am always up to date on the genres I do care about, which is mostly underground metal and rock, and few bands in other random genres. So, if you’re specifically talking about pop music, then swap one of those yes’s to a no.
I did limit the OP to music that gets airplay on most radio stations or has videos on VH1 and MTV and I’m kind of regretting it now. I probably should have been a little more inclusive.
I think some of us may have ignored that, because we only read the first sentences of OPs. 
I’m 48 and listen to a lot of what programmers call “college radio”, which means not so much pop. And that also means I’m interested in Elfkin’s list, because I see a lot of things I recognize on it, but some I don’t…
I certainly wouldn’t say that i “keep current” in any meaningful way. I don’t listen to top 40 radio in the car, and at home i mostly listen to my CDs, which are generally older stuff and stuff from outside the pop mainstream.
That said, i do get new pop songs in my head quite often, and i have come to learn the names of quite a few current pop artists, and it’s all because of my gym. The YMCA where i work out pipes in a crappy local top 40 radio station, and i now now far more than i ever wanted to about the music of Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Jason Derulo, etc., etc.
I could probably avoid some of this if i were to wear my own headphones to the gym, but i don’t like wearing them while i’m doing weights, and they would also have to be turned up uncomfortably high to completely drown out the gym speakers. So i put up with the high rotation of mediocre pop, punctuated by an even higher rotation of incredibly annoying commercials.
This just pertains to rock, or what’s left of it.
I was very up-to-date from the mid-50s through the mid-80s (in the fifties I was a little kid, but my mom always had the radio on, so I couldn’t help absorbing 50s top-40 music). I fell off sharply from the mid-80s on, though I remained moderately current until the late 90s. Since then, I’ve given up. I just haven’t found the music of the last 10 or 12 years to be worth my bother.
I’ve lately been going (way) back in time, listening to music from the 19-teens and 20s.
I don’t follow mainstream acts a lot. I listen mostly to electronica now, with new music from friend recommendations and other social sources. There are a few pop songs that I hear around me; occasionally I’ll even buy one or two that appeal to me. I’ve also added in a lot of odd stuff, “world” or other traditional music.
My pop tastes, according to my iTunes catalog, tapered off severely post-2000. No surprise since that’s when I moved to Japan and away from college friends, and I don’t like J-Pop; overly-produced, performed by people whose talents are cuteness and marketability, with songs written by a handful of producers and songwriters who churn out masses of bland sameness that even most non-singers are capable of rendering mostly faithfully.
But what do you feel about Japanese pop?