Real world musicians whose work appears in Doctor Who is a category for bands and individual musicians whose work appearing in a televised episode is not original to Doctor Who, but instead legally licensed or sampled by the Doctor Who production crew. Examples include: Athlete, The Beatles and Britney Spears.

Related to this category is:

• Real world musicians whose work appears in Torchwood
• Real world musicians whose work appears in Class

People in this category may be contrasted with:

• Doctor Who vocalists, who are people who performed original works for the production of Doctor Who, such as Katherine Jenkins or Mark Chambers.
• Performers of songs about the Doctor Who universe, people who have performed songs that never appeared in an episode, but which nevertheless had a strong Doctor Who connection. Examples: Jon Pertwee ("Who is the Doctor"), Orbital and their rendition of the Doctor Who theme, The Go-Go's ("I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek").
• Musical groups from the real world is an in-universe category, which organises musical groups who exist in the real world and the DWU. The Beatles are such a group.
• Musicians from the real world are individual musical performers who exist within the DWU. Frank Sinatra and Britney Spears are such people.