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Unsung Forum » "How Selling Out Saved Indie Rock" |
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Nov 17, 2013, 08:43
Nov 17, 2013, 08:41
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some of you may have already seen this but thought it worth a post .... http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicahopper/how-selling-out-saved-indie-rock I guess the other question is whether 37 years later saving "it" is actually worth the bother. The dividing line for me is probably where indie ceased to be primarily an economic model and became a style to sell stuff with.
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Monganaut 2373 posts |
Edited Nov 17, 2013, 15:01
Nov 17, 2013, 14:59
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Interesting article, though massively biased. No comments or page time for 'indie' types making a living from music outside of the advertising industry. 30 years ago, 'selling out' to ad agencies would have made me question an artists scruples, but the ball park has changed these days. Many people have no intension of ever buying a legit record, CD or download, and are content to illegally DL as much as they want. I'm guessing, as a young act, whilst it's never been easier to get your music out there to some kind of audience, the competition seems more fierce. Pretty much everyone feels the need to be in a band, it's almost a teenage right of passage these days. As an avid music fan, without the help of HH recomendations, or friends I'd be wading through a sea of shit to find the diamonds. I can't see many newly formed bands making enough money from their art to live much above the povety line. So I guess many who want to give it a go at make it a living will take the money and run if it's offered. If the ad takes off, it gets them to wider audience pretty much instantly. It takes some scruples to turn down $30 or $50 000 when you've been probably scraping by on next to nothing. Hell it buys you transport or equiment or just more time to sort out where your going with your art. My old self would have been instantly precious and damning if someone I loved had taken the money. And even now i still roll my eyes when I hear Hawkwind or Buzzcocks used to sell us shit, But, if I'm honest, I can't blame people for taking the cash, hell, it's probaby better than what just about any label would offer them for one song.
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machineryelf 3681 posts |
Nov 17, 2013, 19:55
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This kind of gives it away ''but composing for commercials means being an engineer, dexterous composer, and multi-instrumentalist'' which counts out anything that is indie rock in the original sense Music making tools are pretty much available now to anyone in mainland Europe/USA. This is as good a way to sort the wheat from the chaff, at least in that small area that is 'popular catchy rock songs that appeal to a wide demographic' You're still pretty fucked if you want to form a free jazz ensemble, doom rock chamber orchestra or just about anything that doesn't fit in with the view/needs of marketing executives As for saving Indie Rock , well that died a long time ago and however hard you kick the corpse it's staying dead
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5-Track 193 posts |
Nov 17, 2013, 20:58
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IanB wrote: some of you may have already seen this but thought it worth a post .... http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicahopper/how-selling-out-saved-indie-rock I guess the other question is whether 37 years later saving "it" is actually worth the bother. The dividing line for me is probably where indie ceased to be primarily an economic model and became a style to sell stuff with. I guess I can't really argue with anything in this article (except quibble over the ambiguous use of "indie", vacillating between genre and process/life-experience) but it makes me queasy anyway... trying to play the "what if I were in this position" game (no one is offering me money for anything so it's moot) and mostly all I can think is I hope it would depend on who was offering, what they wanted, what they were going to do with it, and how much. Just like how I decide what I eat, what businesses I support in my day-to-day consumering, etc.
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Hunter T Wolfe 1706 posts |
Nov 17, 2013, 21:28
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Doing adverts works as a way for musicians to support themselves, certainly. But it's the death of rock music as meaning anything beyond just the music, i.e. a social-political force representative of any kind of counterculture or alternative way of life. The idea that pop music means something, even if it's just choosing to be a mod or a rocker; all that baggage and association is traded for the baggage and association of an Audi advert.
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Citizensmurf 1703 posts |
Nov 17, 2013, 21:48
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IanB wrote: some of you may have already seen this but thought it worth a post .... http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicahopper/how-selling-out-saved-indie-rock I guess the other question is whether 37 years later saving "it" is actually worth the bother. The dividing line for me is probably where indie ceased to be primarily an economic model and became a style to sell stuff with. What would the difference between an economic model and a style to sell stuff be? These seem pretty much the same to me, music of all kinds is marketed and sold, no matter what scale it's on. I've made this point before, but why is buying an iPhone less of a moral issue than earning money from licensing a song for an iPhone commercial? Somehow, as consumers we are insulated from supporting a large corporation, but someone is a sell-out for taking money from the same company. Does that make any sense? If anything, we as consumers are the sellouts, and someone like Moby should be applauded for making money directly from corporations rather than indirectly via consumers.
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Lawrence 9547 posts |
Edited Nov 17, 2013, 23:24
Nov 17, 2013, 23:24
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How the fuck would any large corporation want to use my music for their advertizing anyways? The stuff I do is more meant for movie soundtracks than commercials for beer or underwear or cars most people would not be able to afford...
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billding68 1016 posts |
Nov 17, 2013, 23:34
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This whole subject to me smacks of self importance and the cooler then thou mentality some people have.if you are a musician and you are selling your "product" for a profit haven't you in a way already sold out? Does it really matter in the big scheme of things really? Is worth argument really? People sell to make money is that bad? If I had the where with all to produce anything people wanted to buy fucking right id sell it!
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IanB 6761 posts |
Nov 18, 2013, 09:57
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Citizensmurf wrote: IanB wrote: some of you may have already seen this but thought it worth a post .... http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicahopper/how-selling-out-saved-indie-rock I guess the other question is whether 37 years later saving "it" is actually worth the bother. The dividing line for me is probably where indie ceased to be primarily an economic model and became a style to sell stuff with. What would the difference between an economic model and a style to sell stuff be? I have no particular axe to grind on this issue but I just thought the premise was interesting. In the purest sense I saw Indie as a largely DIY methodology of reaching the market place as unmediated by the mainstream industry as possible. Of course most of what got through was mediated by the three inkies so it stopped short of being truly outside the system of gate keepers. When I was booking bands at a fairly well known 400 cap black box venue in the early / mid 80s I saw a sudden shift between what was at first an astonishing variety of artists that were being pitched for shows into a broad homogeneity in terms of what was on offer and what agents were picking up for representation. Indie from 84-ish became a shadow mainstream with its own fairly hard wired style book and run for the most part in exactly the same way as the majors but on a smaller scale. There were shifts in musical fashion from season to season and competing factions but it felt as if the church got a lot narrower post the commercial breakthrough of The Smiths / James / JAMC etc etc. From then on the music press was torn between the majors that bought most of the advertising and the indies who supplied most of the subject matter. I didn't see much business innovation in the vein of say Dischord. More's the pity.
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stray 2057 posts |
Nov 18, 2013, 11:30
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IanB wrote: I didn't see much business innovation in the vein of say Dischord. More's the pity. Interesting you use Dischord as a reference. You can't really get more niche than Dischord, love them and what they do but it is reasonably strict on style (audible style that is, and politically too you could argue) and it's very rigid when it comes to location. If you aren't from/based in DC then you don't get on the label. I agree and see a lot of value in their approach, but, it's still really just a scene based label ('The Even's' notwithstanding). We're really not sure of scene based labels, but not many that are regional promotion engines like Dischord. Indie labels have always been scene based historically, the problem is the number of scenes out there have dwindled, therefore the musical variety isn't there for an indie label to identify and push. The problem must be then the lack of enough artists, and reasonably sized audiences, with imagination. Labels cannot lead this change they have to serve what's there. These are not problems electronic music, jazz or out there experimental music suffer from though. Indie homogenised itself, so.. die and move on. This isn't unique to guitar based/pop tinged music. I see the same thing happens in electronic music, but it happens there far more rapidly. Dub Techno is my current case study on this, what started as an imaginative new form with a wide palette is now a very small inflexible form that uses/reuses the same grooves, pads and production. Die and move on.
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