Adult contemporary music (AC) is a broad style of popular music, ranging from 1950s and 1960s vocal music to predominantly ballad-heavy music with varying degrees of rock influence. The term is also used to describe or categorize radio formats that play such music.

AC radio plays mainstream music, excluding "hip hop", "heavy metal", youth-oriented "hard rock", some "teen pop" music and rhythmic "dance tracks" as they are less popular amongst the target demographic of these radio stations, which is intended for an adult audience. Radio stations playing this format will often target the 18–54 age group, also the demographic that has received the most attention from advertisers since the 1960s.

Over the years, AC has spawned numerous sub-genres: "hot AC", "soft AC" (also known as "lite AC"), "modern AC", "urban AC", "rhythmic AC", "smooth AC" (i.e., smooth jazz), and "Christian AC" (i.e., a softer type of Contemporary Christian music). Some radio stations play only "hot AC", whilst some play only "soft AC"; and then there are others that explicitly play a variety of sub-genres. Therefore, it is not usually considered a specific genre of music; it is merely an assemblage of selected tracks from musicians of many different genres.

Soft or SOFT may refer to: