Nevertheless, by the mid-1970s, certain broad social, aesthetic, and technological developments had emerged which paved the way for the revival of a modernized form of the ghazal. As more middle class consumers were able to afford phonographs, the potential began to emerge for a new pan-regional popular music which could be, for the first time, independent of films. A modernized, simplified pop ghazal was the ideal genre for such an audience, and it correspondingly began to flourish as such around 1977. In order to achieve a genuinely mass audience, however, it required a mass medium which was cheaper and more accessible than records, and yet still distinct from cinema. The spread of cassette players among the upper and middle classes in the late 1970s provided the essential catalyst for the flowering of the modern ghazal as the first pan-regional commercial genre to challenge the dominance of film music and its coterie of stars and producers.
Singers appear on stage and on cassette covers dressed in fine Muslim-style kurtas and sherwanis.
Thus the entire identity and core audience of the modern ghazal are quite distinct from those of the mainstream film song. Journalistic critics, for their part, are quick to deplore the occasional presence of film elements in the contemporary ghazal, such as the usage of borrowed film melodies. Its difference from the circumscribed and hide-bound geet is fast obliterated. Modern vocalists, like their predecessors, tend to sing the works of contemporary poets as well as old favorites by past masters. Rather than indicating a decline, the preference for contemporary verses, even if often inferior to the classics, can be regarded as an indication of the continued vitality and evolution of the ghazal as poetry.