INDUSTRY: What is indie and how does it work?

What is Indie?

Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produced and was initially used interchangeably with alternative rock.

Origins:

"Indie" was the term used to describe the music produced by punk rock labels. The Buzzcocks revolutionised the music industry by producing their record independently. 

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The BBC documentary Music for Misfits: The Story of Indie pinpoints the birth of indie as the 1977 self-publication of the Spiral Scratch EP by Buzzcocks. Although Buzzcocks are often classified as a punk band, it has been argued that the publication of Spiral Scratch independently of a major label led to the coining of the name "indie."

Commercial Breakthrough:

The Smith's, an indie rock band active during the 80's are credited as being one of the most important bands to come through the British indie scene. They paved the way for bands such as Oasis, the libertines and Arctic Monkeys.

The Stone Roses are an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1983. They were one of the pioneering groups of the Madchester movement that was active during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The band's most successful line-up consists of vocalist Ian Brown, guitarist John Squire, bassist Gary "Mani" Mounfield, and drummer Alan "Reni" Wren. The band released their debut album, The Stone Roses, in 1989. The album was a breakthrough success for the band and garnered critical acclaim, with many critics regarding it as one of the greatest British albums ever recorded. A chart battle between Blur and Oasis dubbed "The Battle of Britpop" brought Britpop to the forefront of the British press in 1995.

The 1990's brought major changes to the indie rock scene. Bands such as Oasis and Blur broke into the main stream, away from the small-scale and political elements of the 80's indie scene.

Decline and rebirth in indie Music:

In 1996 Oasis played in a two night set too a combine audience of 250,000 people and was credited at that time as the last great Britpop performance as nothing after that would match the scale. With Oasis's third album "Be here by now," initially receiving positive reviews and selling strongly it started ti subject itself to string criticism, as the genre and movement started to slow down and falter many bands started breaking up. Then along with the success of pop groups such as the Spice Girls it was seen as if they had "snatched the spirit if the age of those responsible for Britpop."

The revival of Indie Music is credited mostly to  The Libertines, the libertines were a British rock band, formed in London in 1997 by frontmen Carl Barât (vocals/guitar) and Pete Doherty (vocals/guitar). The band, centred on the song writing partnership of Barat and Doherty, also included John Hassall (bass) and Gary Powell (drums) for most of its recording career. The band was part of the indie rock revival and spearheaded the movement in the UK. The band were seen as saving Indie Rock and bringing it back to the attention of the media with often controversial circumstances such as Doherty’s drug abuse and there famous Guerilla gigs were they would invite fans around to there flat to play intimate gigs. The band gained some notoriety in the early 2000s. Although their mainstream success was initially limited, their profile soon grew, culminating in a No. 2 single and No. 1 album on the UK Charts. In December 2004, their self-titled second album was voted the second best album of the year by NME magazine.

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Now more recently the Arctic Monkeys are regarded as one of the most prominent bands to be part of the Indie Rock revival in the UK, after achieving commercial success and spawning two number one singles with their debut album and reached the status of being one of the biggest bands in the world having headlined Glastonbury and having multiple best selling albums across the world.

Distribution / self - distribution:

Traditionally, distributors got records into stores and labels got people to go buy them (through promotion). Along the way, each of these middlemen took a percentage of the revenue.
This system still exists today. At least to some extent but the role of distributors and record labels has changed dramatically. Not to mention the changes the internet has brought in the way people consume music. People spend more time online, and less money on physical music.

The change initially stemmed from indie music, in which indie artists (independent,) would produce there music without a label and produce the record themselves, one of the earliest examples and credited for the initial change was the punk band, then coined indie, The Buzzcocks. 

However more recently, the production of music independently has become much easier due to digitisation. Anyone can record and release their own music without the need for a record label. 

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Whilst the production and release of music has been made much easier to be done independently due to the digitisation and introduction of online music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and Youtube, the monetisation of albums and music took a great hit.