Basically the term "alternative" came about in the early to mid 90's when the music industry began it's major overhaul. Bands started to break out of the normal genres and come out with new sounds... In the 80's there was Glam Rock/Pop, Metal, and just the beginning of the HipHop scene... Now with the turn of the 90's and the "Grundge" rage the music started to take a new form. Bands that were popular for wearing tight leather pants with fishnet shirts and big hair with lots of makeup found themselves outdone by the new era of simplistic, mediocre bands. Same went for pop music and rock. The term alternative was placed on music that wasn't necessarily Poppy enough to be on Pop radio and wasn't necessarily heavy enough to be on rock radio. In most cases this music wasn't too popular with teens but rather adult listeners... Today the term alternative is very general. There are sub-genres such as alternative pop, alternative rock, alternative hip hop... and so on. Basically, it's not hard rock and it's not pop... it may sound like hard rock with a poppy structure or sound... it's somewhere in between... it's the alternative.