Lounge music is a retrospective description of music popular in the 1950s and 1960s encompassing such genres as exotica, easy listening and space age pop. Lounge music ranges from beautiful music-influenced instrumentals, to modern electronica with chillout or downtempo influences, while maintaining its focus on retro-space-age cultural elements. The earliest forms of lounge music appeared in the 1920s and 1930s, known as light music. Lounge music is a form of mood music, intended to create the feeling of another place such as a jungle, an island paradise, or outer space.

Lounge music may also refer to music played in the lounges and bars of hotels and casinos, or at standalone piano bars.