Accept
ATB
Hans Albers
Thomas Anders
Amon Düül
Wolf Biermann (born 1936), singer-songwriter and East German dissident
Böhse Onkelz
Bushido
Rolf Köhler
Fritz Busch (1890–1951), conductor
Sarah Connor, pop/soul singer
Michael and Sandra Cretu, founder-performers of Enigma (musical project) and Sandra (group)
DJ Tomekk
Frank Farian
Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954), conductor and composer
Herbert Grönemeyer (born 1956)
Heino, popular singer
LaFee
Reinhard Mey (born 1942)
Marius Müller-Westernhagen
Anne-Sophie Mutter (born 1963), violinist
Karl Münchinger, conductor
Xavier Naidoo
Nena (born 1960)
Meshell Ndegeocello (born 1969)American parents not German.
Klaus Nomi (1944–1983)
Kool Savas, half German, half Turkish
Lisa Otto, opera singer
Michael Schenker (born 1955), guitar player of UFO and solo career
Sandra
Scooter
SASH!
Rammstein
Paffendorf
Sido (rapper)
Tokio Hotel
Hannes Wader
Bruno Walter (1876–1962), conductor and composer
Konstantin Wecker
Paul Van Dyk
Willy Hess, violinist
Yvonne Catterfeld
Dieter Bohlen (born 1954), music-producer

Forms of German-language music include Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW), Krautrock, Hamburger Schule, Volksmusik, German hip hop, trance, Schlager and multiple varieties of folk music. Classical composers include Richard Wagner and Johann Sebastian Bach, while Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was among many opera composers who created the field of German opera.

The beginning of what is now considered German music could be traced back to the 12th century compositions of mystic abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote a variety of hymns and other kinds of Christian music.

Minnesingers and Meistersingers
After Latin-language religious music had dominated for centuries, in the 12th century to the 14th centuries, minnesingers (love poets), singing in German, spread across Germany. Minnesingers were aristocrats traveling from court to court who had become musicians, and their work left behind a vast body of literature, Minnelieder. The following two centuries saw the minnesingers replaced by middle-class meistersingers, who were often master craftsmen in their main profession, whose music (meistergesang) was much more formalized and rule-based than that of the minnesingers. Minnesingers and meistersingers could be considered parallels of French troubadours and trouvère.

Among the minnesingers, Hermann, a monk from Salzburg, deserves special note. He incorporated folk styles from the Alpine regions in his compositions. He made some primitive forays into polyphony as well. Walther von der Vogelweide and Reinmar von Hagenau are probably the most famous minnesingers from this period.

Classical music: sixteenth century to the present
Germans have played a leading role in the development of classical music. Many of the best classical musicians such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Brahms or Mahler were ethnically German. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, German classical music was revolutionized by Oswald von Wolkenstein, who travelled across Europe learning about classical traditions, spending time in countries like France and Italy. He brought back some techniques and styles to his homeland, and within a hundred years, Germany had begun producing composers renowned across the continent. Among the first of these composers was the organist Conrad Paumann.

Folk music
Germany has many unique regions with their own folk traditions of music and dance. Much of the 20th century saw German culture appropriated for the ruling powers (who fought "foreign" music at the same time), and thus it remained decidedly unpopular until later in the century. Most recently, the East German regime promoted folk music as long as it was what they saw as an expression of pure German tradition, and a tool for spreading party propaganda.

In both East and West Germany, folk songs called volkslieder were taught to children; these were popular, sunny and optimistic, and had little relation to authentic German folk traditions. Inspired by American and English roots revivals, Germany underwent many of the same changes following the 1968 student revolution in West Germany, and new songs, featuring political activism and realistic joy, sadness and passion, were written and performed on the burgeoning folk scene. In East Germany, the same process did not begin until the mid-70s, when folk musicians began incorporating revolutionary ideas in coded songs.

Popular folk songs included emigration songs from the 19th century, work songs and songs of apprentices, as well as democracy-oriented folk songs collected in the 1950s by Wolfgang Steinitz. Beginning in 1970, the Festival des politischen Liedes, an East German festival focusing on political songs, was held annually and organized (until 1980) by the FDJ (East German youth association). Musicians from up to thirty countries would participate, and, for many East Germans, it was the only exposure possible to foreign music. Among foreign musicians at the festival, some were quite renowned, including Inti Illimani (Chile), Billy Bragg (England), Dick Gaughan (Scotland), Mercedes Sosa (Argentina) and Pete Seeger (United States), while German performers included, from both East and West, Oktoberclub, Wacholder and Hannes Wader.

Germany's television market is the largest in Europe, with some 34 million TV households. The many regional and national public broadcasters are organised in line with the federal political structure. Around 90% of German households have cable or satellite TV, and viewers can choose from a variety of free-to-view public and commercial channels. Pay-TV services have not become popular or successful while public TV broadcasters ZDF and ARD offer a range of digital-only channels.

Germany is home to some of the world's largest media conglomerates, including Bertelsmann and the Axel Springer AG. Some of Germany's top free-to-air commercial TV networks are owned by ProSiebenSat1.

The German book market produces around 60,000 new publications every year. It represents 18% of all the books published worldwide and puts Germany in third place among the world’s book producers. The Frankfurt Book Fair is considered to be the most important book fair in the world for international deals and trading and has a tradition that spans over 500 years.

The country's news is provided for English speakers by news magazine Der Spiegel, state broadcaster Deutsche Welle and news site The Local.

In December 2008 the top visited websites by German internet users were Google.de, Google.com, YouTube, eBay, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Amazon.de and gmx.net.

Carl Friedrich Abel (1725–1787), composer
Martin Agricola (1466–1506), composer
Siegfried Alkan (1858–1941), composer
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788), composer, son of J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), composer
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), composer
Martin Boettcher (born 1927), film-composer (Karl May movies)
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), composer
Max Bruch (1838–1920), composer
Hanns Eisler (1898–1962), composer
Friedrich von Flotow (1812–1883), composer
Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1759), composer, opera composer
Fanny Hensel, composer
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), composer
Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921), composer
Albert Lortzing (1801–1851), composer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), composer
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847), composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), composer and musician
Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880), composer
Carl Orff (1895–1982), composer
Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), composer
Hans Pfitzner (1869–1949), composer
Max Reger (1873–1916), composer
Wolfgang Rihm (born 1952), composer
Leopold Schefer (1784–1862), writer and composer
Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672), composer
Clara Schumann (1819–1896), composer
Robert Schumann (1810–1856), composer, songwriter
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), modern composer
Richard Strauss (1864–1949), composer, opera composer
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), composer
Richard Wagner (1813–1883), composer
Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826), composer
Kurt Weill (1900–1950), composer (Threepenny Opera, "September Song")
Hans Zimmer (born 1957), film-composer