Arcadia University Arcadia University
ScholarWorks@Arcadia ScholarWorks@Arcadia
Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works Undergraduate Research
Winter 12-11-2023
Pop and Indie: What Do They Mean and Why Does It Matter? Pop and Indie: What Do They Mean and Why Does It Matter?
Genre and Marketing from Within the UK Music Scene Genre and Marketing from Within the UK Music Scene
Maggie Malin
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/undergrad_works
Part of the Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Other Music Commons, Social History Commons,
and the Sociology of Culture Commons
Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Malin, Maggie, "Pop and Indie: What Do They Mean and Why Does It Matter? Genre and Marketing from
Within the UK Music Scene" (2023).
Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works
. 82.
https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/undergrad_works/82
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Undergraduate Research at ScholarWorks@Arcadia.
It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works by an authorized administrator of
ScholarWorks@Arcadia. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected].
Malin 1
Pop and Indie: What Do They Mean and Why Does It Matter? Genre and Marketing
from Within the UK Music Scene
Maggie Malin
INPR 310: Work in Thought and Action
Dr. Joanna Simos
Malin 2
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to explore the evolution of “pop” and “indie” as words and as
genres from within the London music scene, and to suggest the most appropriate or
effective marketing techniques based on a standard understanding of each genre and
its implications. For each of these genres, I establish two definitions: a semantic
definition, based on the etymology of the word and the cultural implications of the
genre’s origins and history, and a sonic definition, based on any overarching standards
of how the genre’s music sounds. In defining each genre’s sound, its history and
evolution are considered, as well as its modern connotations.
For this research, I conducted a series of interviews with the employees of a
London-based music management firm regarding their own experiences with and
understandings of genre from within the industry. These responses were synthesised
with a number of historical and academic texts on the genres of pop, indie, and
alternative music, as well as music publications from different years and eras of music.
Each genre’s differences are key to understanding how best to connect its music
to its audience. A modern semantic definition of pop music is most relevant when
marketing the genre today; marketing pop relies heavily on personality expressed
through social media and can have a harder time being discovered through playlisting,
or a placement of new music onto curated genre-specific playlists. Indie music’s sound
is more historically consistent, so a historical sonic understanding is most useful for
marketing indie; playlisting and live performances are a better fit for marketing this
genre, whereas social media presence should pay homage to an indie lineage.
Malin 3
INTRODUCTION
The music world is always changing. Since the postwar inception of “popular
culture” in the UK and US in the 1950s, the music that the average citizen listened to
was necessarily shaped by the circumstances it was created in. This evolution has
fascinated me since my childhood, when I realised around age ten that the pop music I
loved must have evolved from the pop music that my parents listened to when they
were my age, and that that music must have come from something else. Taking the
Western world decade by decade and considering the historically changing
sociopolitical atmosphere as I learned about it, the evolution of music from the jazz and
swing sounds of the first half of the century to the electronic pop I was used to started to
make more sense in a way that opened the world up to me. An internship at a
multi-genre management company in the heart of London’s music scene became a key
for me to further explore the specifics of how music changes over time, who that matters
to, and why.
During my time taking a British subcultural history class alongside my music
business internship, notable British artists like the Beatles, the Smiths, and the Arctic
Monkeys have found their way into my frequent listening rotation. I have become more
attuned to what different variations on “rock” music sounded like at different points in
history, and I can pinpoint its subgenres with baseline confidence. I think most of us can
– the Beatles’ earlier catalogue is a kind of rock and roll “pop” of its time; the jangly and
dreamy sound of the Smiths is still present in what we call “indie” today; the
rock-instrument Arctic Monkeys begs the modifier “alternative” on the modern scene.
Malin 4
These descriptive words come up a lot in the music business. Upon signing a new artist
to the company or receiving a demo album or single, one of the first things we do is
identify the genre. It’s instinctual, second nature. The management group gets all kinds,
from epic, sprawling prog rock concept albums to shy and sincere bedroom indie pop
singles. None of their artists are pop radio megastars, but many aspire to a mainstream
radio sound, and most are independently produced. Classifying these songs for
distribution onto streaming platforms begs the question of how literally to take the
names of genres that they may fall under:
Pop – short for “popular”, meaning enjoyed by the many. Lots of people listen to
it, so it is popular, so it is pop. A quantitative word describing audience response.
Indie – short for “independent”, describing the way the music is made and
distributed. Qualitative, describing the artist’s process.
These literal definitions alone do not describe the sound of either of these
genres, though the most casual listener is aware that there is a specific sound
associated with each one. Our understandings and even our definitions of these genre
descriptors have changed over time. “Indie” is a sound now – and its artists can belong
to a big label. “Pop” covers a vast number of sounds, and an album can still have a
“pop” sound without millions of listeners (this one is particularly relevant to my
coworkers, many of whom are singer-songwriters themselves, independently produced,
alternative to the mainstream “pop” roster but nonetheless a “pop” sound).
I confronted this incongruity over lunch with a colleague one afternoon, whose
songwriting degree and handful of years of professional experience in both the worlds of
Malin 5
music business and production lend her a sharp insight into the issue. This conversation
led me to my central question: assuming that genre definitions do in fact change over
time, how do the modern connotations of “pop” and “indie” in the London music
scene differ from their denotations, and how do those connotations inform the
way these genres are marketed?
My position within the music industry – particularly London’s music industry –
gives me unique leverage to explore this question. London has been at the forefront of a
plethora of influential genres since at least the 1950s. Music is an important focus of
every British subculture across the whole of the twentieth century and into the
twenty-first. My internship position gives me access to a whole library of music history,
both written and oral. My boss has an impressive collection of books on music
phenomena – history, fashion, events, and business of the last one hundred years or so
– displayed on a bookshelf in the office. I was quick to ask if they were available to
borrow, and quick to learn that I was the only employee in sixteen years of the company
to ask. I was happy – my boss began pointing out recommendations right away – but a
little shocked. The people in this office live and breathe music – surely they would take
a recreational historical interest in how it evolves?
This made me realise the kind of impact that my research could have – to turn
the attention of the music marketing world to the terms they may take for granted.
Understanding the details of pop and indie music can help marketers find the most
effective ways to sell their artists’ music. Music marketing in the age of streaming and
social media relies on quick categorisation. A better understanding of the connotations
Malin 6
of and differences between the pop and indie genres can bolster marketing techniques
across these platforms.
For this study I have drawn upon the publications available to me through my
boss’s library – at least forty years in the making – and have interviewed a number of
my colleagues about their experiences in the music industry as artists, managers, and
marketers. I have synthesised their hands-on understanding of genre with book
research on the history of the pop and indie genres, particularly within the UK music
scene. The scope of my research is limited to the company I’m interning with; opinions
may vary across the national scene, but there is variety in my colleagues’ perspectives,
and at the very least my research acts as a case study of one organisation.
1
Based on
my observations, I understand that the sounds of “pop” and “indie” music will continue to
evolve in the coming five, ten, and fifty years, eventually rendering my modern
definitions outmoded. But at that point my research becomes a historical snapshot in
time that can help to contextualise the next form that the music world will evolve into,
and the forms after that. By the end of this paper we will have a better understanding of
how these genres arrived at their modern connotations from their origins, and what their
contemporary meanings suggest for music marketing.
OUTLINE
This paper is divided into sections by genre. For each section, I will begin with a
discussion on the cultural history and implications of the genre, as well as the etymology
of its name, to establish a semantic definition. Then I will explain the sound of the genre
and its evolution over time to establish a sonic definition. I will end each section with a
1
For further discussion on research approach and rationale, see Appendix I on page 28.
Malin 7
discussion of the marketing implications of the genre via playlisting and social media,
the genre’s cultural and sonic implications for connecting with a modern audience, and
any of its connections to another genre.
POP
As we’ll see for each of these genres, the word “pop” describes two significant
aspects of music: its semantics and its sound. Both of these aspects have evolved since
their genre’s inception; for pop, the sound more so than the etymological meaning. In
fact, the semantics of genre labels remain relatively static while the sounds of the
genres tend to change with technological and sociopolitical shifts over time – some
more than others. Today’s “pop” would be unrecognisable to a young adult from the
1950s, and is even distinctly different from the “pop” of five or ten years ago. I’m
keeping “pop” in quotations as we’re referring to the combination of its semantic and
sonic meanings, neither of which we’ve defined yet. We’ll begin with the semantics,
which requires a bit of a cultural history lesson.
POP | CULTURE + ETYMOLOGY
The word “pop” as used to describe music is the same “pop” used to modify
“culture” as the Western world developed a new style of multimedia entertainment after
World War II. The industrialisation first developed at the turn of the century was
perfected during the war effort, when mass-production became a tactical necessity.
Victorious, the UK (and US) prospered culturally after the war; the colourful, noisy,
mass-manufacturable, marketable appliances, clothing, magazines, and music that
Malin 8
emerged in the war’s wake was dubbed “popular culture”, for its possession of
“autonomous values which are outside of, and indifferent to, the critical values of
Western ‘fine arts’ and ‘official culture’” (Cordell 72). Pop culture was – and is, though its
dominance makes it less of a big deal today – an alternative to the typical implications
of entertainment and art as a delicacy for the “cultured” upper class – opera, theatre,
symphonies and the like. Pop culture was culture by and for the people – or at least it
was marketed to seem that way.
Especially in terms of music – rock and roll had just been born and was being
marketed to the simultaneously conceived concept of the teenager – a relatable human
personality was a necessity for securing success. A typically successful British pop star
story of the 1950s often told of “a garage-hand or a waitress” transformed “into a ‘star’
overnight”, but who “still retains the tastes and allegiances of his group” (Cordell 73).
Popular music and its celebrated personalities were considered “pop culture” not only
because of their favourably unsophisticated sound but because of their accessibility to
the common person as well.
The pop music we hear on BBC Radio 1 today may sound nothing like the music
our postwar ancestors were listening to, but the “pop” name still remains. It starts to feel
redundant: popular music is common. The logic is circular. The moniker “pop” persists
as a qualitative measure of the relative number of people listening to that kind of music.
POP | SOUND + EVOLUTION
Something curious about taking the semantic definition of “pop” music on its own
is that it covers a wide variety of sonic genres. As mentioned, the first sound of postwar
Malin 9
pop music was rock and roll; this sound was all but obsolete by the doowop- and
motown-dominated 1960s pop scene. Folk influence permeated the pop of the ‘70s, and
synthesisers came around in time for the ‘80s to redefine pop as an almost exclusively
electronic genre through the ‘90s and into the twenty-first century. Today’s pop radio
mixes rap and R&B in alongside singer-songwriter piano ballads – and yet it is all “pop”
in the sense that it is all accessible to the common listener – “easy to listen to and
relatable in a way that it just doesn’t scratch the surface”, in the words of one coworker
(P.I.1). When asked to describe what pop sounds like, another colleague opened with
“At the moment, Olivia Rodrigo” (P.I.2), the subordinate clause indicating the necessarily
evolutionary nature of the pop sound.
Though the array of popular genres has changed greatly over the last eighty
years, the core tenets of pop have not. Bill Drummond of avant-garde pop group The
Timelords wrote in 1988 that the four pillars of successful pop music are as follows: “a
dance groove that will run all the way through the record”, a run time of “no longer than
three minutes and thirty seconds”, a specific order of verses and choruses, and “some,
but not many” lyrics (Timelords 673-4). These tenets essentially hold true; with each
decade and its new musical stylings, pop music is short, predictable music that people
can sing and dance to.
In gathering an understanding of the generalisation of that sound, I asked my
colleagues for a snap characterisation of each genre off the top of their heads.
Three-quarters of my interviewees described pop music as “happy”; one-half said
“upbeat”; another half used “commercial” as a descriptor for the genre at large. The
image of pop music as happy and upbeat that my colleagues described took me by
Malin 10
surprise – Adele, Lewis Capaldi, and Ed Sheeran immediately come to mind as British
artists who have found fame in large part from downtempo, often sad pop ballads. Still,
their lyrics about love and heartbreak – often just specific enough that any listener can
build a personal connection to the song – are, in the words of someone more interested
in alternative genres, “really basic things that you could think about even without
listening to the songs” (P.I.1). Built into the pop genre is a baseline broadness of
experience: the music must be easily emotionally accessible in order to be marketable
to the masses, as its semantic definition demands.
As early as 1957, members of the music industry recognized that “[t]he pop song
is advertisement – advertisement contained within its own performance” (Cordell 77).
Like pop culture at large, pop music is meant to be mass-produced and sold to as many
people as possible. This does not necessarily represent any kind of morality or lack
thereof that pop music may hold; it is an observation of the culture that the genre grew
out of, and that culture’s economic function. This has not changed – in today’s industry,
“marketing music is a lot different from marketing products” (P.I.1.); it requires a kind of
creativity unnecessary when selling a physical product that one can demonstrate or
show off. In that sense, the pop sound must be “commercial”, widely appealing,
because it needs to be sold. Music is a rare commodity in its intangibility, but it is a
commodity nonetheless, and a mass-produced one at that.
POP | MARKETING IMPLICATIONS
It is impossible to market a song without playing the song itself, meaning that
airplay is critical for a potential pop hit (Cordell 77). While radio, film, and TV dominated
Malin 11
the first fifty years of pop music and its airplay, the advent of online streaming and social
media in the twenty-first century has provided artists and advertisers with new pathways
to get their music discovered. Creating a sympathetic, if not somewhat parasocial,
persona is integral to pop artists both because relatability is a central factor to all
meanings of the genre, and because the feeling of a personal connection with the artist
will make the audience more invested in their releases, the way one might care about a
friend’s personal projects. This technique is particularly important because, both
semantically and sonically speaking, the label “pop” is too broad for other forms of
marketing to be appropriate.
POP MARKETING: PLAYLISTING
The general commercial appeal of pop appears to give it an edge in marketing –
“even people who don’t even like pop” are going to listen to, in one colleague’s
example, Harry Styles, whose inoffensive, danceable sound is designed to appeal to the
general public and is playing everywhere – in shops, on the radio, online – due to his
globally established personality (P.I.1). However, the ease with which Styles’ music
markets itself highlights the difficulty in marketing new pop music – pop fans have
already found pop music they like. The pop genre is so vast and so prevalent that it is
difficult to break into, especially now that most of our music is fed to us by algorithms
based on the previous listening activity of ourselves and of others. “Playlisting” is a
marketing technique through which an artist or distributor “can upload [a] song, pay for
some credits to pitch to various curators, and then find a list of curators that would be
most likely to promote the song based on their general preferences”; the compatible
Malin 12
curators will then place the song onto a third-party playlist (that is, a playlist not made by
the streaming service or its typical individual users) where listeners can discover it
(“Playlistification” 4:21-4:31). Another option is pitching directly to Spotify for a shot at
appearing on one of their editorial playlists, which are often pushed out to the entire
Spotify user base.
Hypothetically, achieving this recognition would make discovery incredibly easy.
The issue is that the vastness of the pop genre can drown out new or otherwise small
artists. A colleague says, “If you look at ‘New Music Friday’ [Spotify’s weekly-updated
compilation of pop releases, with over four million followers], it’s quite useless as a
genre thing because it’s new music [in general, with disregard to sound]. So, there’s
gonna be a high skip rate on that playlist, and people are gonna go to the stuff they like”
(Spotify; P.I.3). It can be “a bit scary” to face the impenetrable wall of the pop scene,
because marketing to such a broad crowd means “less return on investment” (P.I.1).
There is so much pop music and so many people listening to it by default, so securing
oneself within the genre can be a popularity contest between artists rather than their
sounds.
Unlike more niche genres or genres with a specific cohesive sound, it does not
make sense to market new pop music with an emphasis on the music being “pop”; “if
you got an artist that is very ‘pop’ and flits from style to style, you’ve gotta market the
artist” (P.I.3). Personality is everything when it comes to pop music – a truth of the genre
since its postwar origins, “when [celebrity] judgement criteria made the shift from
‘content’ to ‘personality’” and a star was expected to remain “an ‘available’ type
identifiable with the mass” in order to achieve proper success (Cordell 76, 73). The
Malin 13
Timelords observed in the late ‘80s that number one songs were able to break through
the sameness of the pop formula because of some “originality” of the artist (Timelords
674). In order to succeed in a genre defined by its universal relatability, there needs to
be a personality behind the music whom the audience can relate to.
POP MARKETING: SOCIAL MEDIA
Today, building a celebrity persona takes place on social media, which is a key
tool in modern music marketing. Regardless of a song’s original genre or style, “if it’s
made it onto TikTok then it’s just pop now” – the young, internet-active user base of the
short-form video sharing platform is a goldmine of an audience for music discovery
(P.I.2). TikTok and Instagram, and the ability to “boost” posts on these sites by paying
for an algorithm to push them out to a large number of viewers, are tools for marketing
that doesn’t have to look like a typical advertisement. When teasing or publicising an
upcoming or new release, a pop artist “lip-synching or dancing” to their own music can
show a sense of pride in their creation, and invites the audience to enjoy the song in the
intended manner (P.I.1). Even when not actively featuring their songs, “influencer-style”
content including “speak[ing] to camera”, “be[ing] relatable and fun and easygoing”, and
showing off “your clothes [or] your background” are all important in becoming the kind of
person whom followers will want to see – and hear – more from (P.I.1).
Advertising pop music in the modern day is grounded in social media presence,
which needs to include more than just the song. A pop artist must be some combination
of talented, attractive, funny, or otherwise relatable, and willing to share their work
passionately online. Arguably, only the last of these is a common requirement – the rest
Malin 14
can be mixed and matched and still achieve market success. The key at the heart of
building a loyal following is consistency; “you have to keep creating content” in order “to
convert people from watching a couple of your videos to actually following you” (P.I.1).
The up-and-coming pop music celebrity cannot be an untouchable star (even the stars
of the established pop canon have historically had some factor of down-to-earthness,
whether through fun personalities or humble backstories); they must become something
of a friend to their audience, which is an accessible goal through the connective nature
of social media. This social pseudo-connection both creates an emotional incentive for a
potential audience to become a practical one, and plays into the relatability so integral
to the pop genre, both semantic and sonic.
INDIE
When asked to describe “indie” off the top of their heads, my coworkers gave
descriptions that implied an unpolished sound quality: “a little bit more rough around the
edges, DIY, British” (P.I.3); “like it was recorded 25 years ago, even though it wasn’t”
(P.I.2). This is a good general descriptor that ties back to indie’s history – a post-punk
movement that proudly carried on the tradition of the precedent subculture’s
intentionally amateur sound.
INDIE | SUBCULTURE
After the death of punk in 1979 (colloquially marked by the death of Sex Pistols’
bassist Sid Vicious), the subcultural musical world split into three notable groups: the
New Romantics, the Goths, and for lack of an official title, the Indie Kids. British author
Malin 15
and indie historian Sam Knee describes the early ‘80s indie era as “sandwiched
between the new wave and grunge”, thus “written out of history in favour of the more
familiar territories that bookend either side of the decade” (Knee 3). The Indie Kids, in
aesthetic comparison with the other youth movements of their time, were dull and
forgettable. Indie bands did “not look much different from their audiences, usually
selecting T-shirts and jeans to perform in”; even now, the general stereotype of indie in
the 1980s is remembered as “four boys in scuffy jumpers with Doctor Martens”
(Fonarow 43; P.I.3). This pre-grunge look was intentional in its unremarkable nature, “a
subtle subversive reaction and rejection against the clichéd yuppie flamboyance as
purveyed by the mainstream” and even by the other subcultures of the time (Knee 4).
Aesthetically, indie offered an accessible alternative to any kind of physical, financial, or
indeed musical effort.
The Indie Kids do share an interesting similarity with their more glamorous
subcultural counterparts: an inspiration from the Romantics of old. However, where the
Goths and New Romantics drew on the Romantics’ flamboyant style and dramatic
emotional expression, the Indie Kids opted for a more muted though no less genuine
“exaltation of emotional and sensitivity, the sorrows and sufferings of young Werther, the
privileging of creative spirit over an adherence to formal rules, and an interest in specific
cultural/local identities” (Fonarow 55). The Thatcher era of mass unemployment, which
encouraged individualism with disregard for any kind of collective group or indeed even
society at all, influenced a sort of collective melancholy in the coming-of-age population,
who turned to the greats for inspiration of how to express their discontentment. It was
from this period of economic and societal bleakness that the indie movement was born.
Malin 16
INDIE | ETYMOLOGY
After our interview, my boss took me back to the office and dug out the 9
September 1978 issue of New Musical Express to show me an example of the kinds of
bands that populated the indie charts at the time of the genre’s inception. We paged
through the whole thing side-by-side, past articles on Blondie and the Buzzcocks,
advertisements for imported records and Grateful Dead concerts, and by the time we
reached the Ultravox ad on the back page, we hadn’t found the indie chart. “That’s
strange,” noted my boss. It must not have been in that issue.
There was good reason for the chart’s absence from this issue – the first
“independent” chart wouldn’t appear in music publication until October of the following
year, when New Musical Express compiled their first list of “top-selling releases” at
“selected independent retail outlets” across the UK (Fonarow 32). The word
“independent” in the music world was originally used to describe the distribution method
of its artists, not the sound nor even the production of the “genre”. I put “genre” in
quotes here because through this understanding, “independent” is an attribute, not a
genre. “Genre” describes a sonic constant or an aesthetic expectation across a body of
music – a classification based on “a particular style, form, or content” (“Genre”).
Distributing independently does not imply a specific sound. It just so happens that the
artists using this method in Britain in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s were the ones who had
evolved from punk, carrying forth its self-driven DIY ethos, and sharing with one another
a similar sound.
Malin 17
INDIE ETYMOLOGY: CHARTS
Today, the British independent charts still persist with regard to distribution rather
than sonic genre. In the 28 January 2019 issue of Music Week, pop ballad vocalist
Adele (53.7M monthly listeners on Spotify), genre-explorationist rapper
XXXTENTACION (35.9M), and modern indie rock band Arctic Monkeys (47.8M) all
appear together on the Official Independent Singles Top 30 Chart (“Charts” 49). Each of
these artists, along with their charting contemporaries, are wildly popular in terms of
listeners and followers, and in the case of these three, are vastly sonically different. One
could imagine a very small overlap in diehard fans of each artist (indeed, X’s listener
base skews more American and more male while Adele’s and Arctic Monkeys’ are
slightly more global and heavily more female; between these two, Arctic Monkeys’
listeners skew younger [“XXXTENTACION: Audience”, “Adele…”, “Arctic Monkeys…”]).
So why do these artists appear alongside each other on the independent chart
rather than the official top 75 pop songs of the week, despite being relatively well-known
or even able to be classified as mainstream artists? The answer goes back to the
etymology of “independent” as a description of distributor. No matter how popular an
artist or record becomes, “[a]ny major corporation could have an independent band by
distributing the record through one of the independent distribution companies” (Fonarow
37). This loophole may be a useful one when considering the competition for the
mainstream pop charts – large, established, well-loved personalities are difficult to
compete against, because their marketing is essentially done for them. If an artist or
label wants to chart at all, which in the British music industry is both “a means to and a
measure of success”, especially when a record can remain on the charts for several
Malin 18
weeks, an independent chart provides an alternative place for the artist or label to do so
(30).
Listed alongside each “independent” artist and their song (or songs) that charted
that week is their distributor and label (XL [PIAS Cinram], Bad Vibes Forever [EMPIRE],
and Domino [PIAS UK] respectively) (“Charts” 49). XL and Domino are both
self-described independent record labels, and Bad Vibes Forever is XXXTENTACION’s
self-established label for his music, fashion, and other pursuits. Meanwhile, PIAS
describes itself as “a family of independent record labels” from all over the world “run by
passionate music lovers”, which matches the original indie distribution ethos of “a moral,
aesthetic, and egalitarian enterprise” with passionate, hands-on involvement in the
music being created ([PIAS]; Fonarow 38). Bad Vibes Forever’s umbrella company
EMPIRE is an American record label and distribution company that specialises in
hip-hop, with no mention of “independence” on its webpage, likely due to the
association of “independent” with genre sound rather than distribution method.
The parenthetical distinction of smaller independent labels from larger corporate
bodies is absent from the pop charts in the same issue – this distinction is unique to the
indie charts. As Fonarow reminds us, “records with an independent distribution, despite
the size or nature of the ownership of the record label, are eligible for inclusion on the
independent chart” (Fonarow 30). The labels are listed as a kind of justification for why
artists who share no coherent sound appear together on a specialised chart, like the
Upfront Club Top 30, the Urban Top 20, and the Commercial Pop Top 30, which are
classified in large part by genre or sound. The independent chart appears to be unique
Malin 19
in its functionality – it is the only chart in Music Week to be classified by its distribution
method rather than its sonic genre.
In a contemporary context, the independent chart seems to serve as a loophole
for popular artists to continue to dominate over smaller ones – a phenomenon not
exclusive to the music world. Consider the New York Times Bestseller list – or rather,
lists – for book sales in the US. The list of lists has evolved to cover five different
categories of adult books and four categories of children’s books per week, with five
more genre-specific categories and two audiobook lists ranked monthly. What’s more,
the same book can chart multiple times in the same week if it sells well across
categories – marketing consultant Rob Eagar observes that “the same 10–15 books
usually take up the majority of all the available slots every week” (Eagar). The criteria
for charting a bestseller have the illusion of becoming more specific, with categories for
fiction, nonfiction, hardcover, paperback, and every combination of these, with the five
genre categories besides, when in reality they have become broader. More kinds of
books have the opportunity to chart now, but instead one popular book can dominate as
long as it is printed across multiple categories. In a way, these book charts mirror the
way the contemporary independent music charts function in Britain. As long as a label
or distributor defines itself as independent, it is eligible for consideration and placement
on the independent chart, meaning that otherwise-considered “pop” or “hip-hop” artists
fill up the slots on the indie chart, leaving little room for artists with an “indie” sound.
But what is that “indie sound”? Does it still exist? Does it sound the same as it did
when it started? To address that we have to rewind to the post-punk discussion of
Malin 20
indie’s subculture, and reconnect to the emotional, moral, and material tenets of the
genre.
INDIE | SOUND
In the forty-five years since its inception, we have seen a subtle evolution in the
way indie sounds and a larger one in the meaning of the word itself as a classifier of
music. Part of my understanding of the generalisation of the word “indie” comes from a
game I’ve taken to playing with friends – a song comes on in a café, and I ask them
what genre it is, and how do they know? Whether they have as much fun with this game
as I do or not is not the point of playing – rather the game gives me an insight into the
non-industry perspective on these words. What I’ve learned is that identifying music as
“indie” almost always comes down to “vibes” – no one concrete rule for what fits that
classification. The nebulous quality of the term “independent” when used in regards to
music may be a part of this evolution into something more vague. The independent
charts no longer display a common sound – the sound represented is varied, and the
charting “independent” artists are often mainstream. The bands of the early days are
remembered, and that memory has evolved into the indie subgenres of today.
Besides its literal etymological definition, the collective indie sound is most
important in describing the genre – and a constant that we can observe over history. In
the 1980s, most of the music that was circulating through independent distributors had
the same sound – “anything after punk that was still a bit DIY” – and so the sonic genre
of “indie” was born (P.I.3). People who were alive during indie’s germination could give a
more specific description of the genre’s sound: “guitar-based, drum, jangly, The Cure”,
Malin 21
for example (P.I.4), which aligns with Fonarow’s researched understanding of typical
indie bands as “basic four-piece combos with electric guitar, bass, drums, and vocals”
(Fonarow 39). Vocally speaking, indie began as a more male genre, though this has
changed over time; indie in general is not defined by gender (though a male band and a
female solo performer come to mind quicker than the reverse). These stylisations of
indie, as well as a feeling of an almost liquid quality to the flow of its music, still persist
throughout the genre today.
Another historical and persistent staple of the indie sound is a distinct feeling of
amateur-ness inherent to performance and production of the genre. At the beginning of
indie, “technical proficiency” was discouraged, as it was seen as “formal training that
distances a performer from the essence of music” (Fonarow 42, 43). There was a sort of
reverse snobbery regarding indie artists, who subculturally represented a down-to-earth
working class antihero. This ideology is not too different from the required relatability of
the pop star, though the application is different and arguably more authentic in sound.
The “rough around the edges, DIY” indie sound that evolved out of punk persists today,
when indie artists may not be thinking so much about punk but are still concerned with
authenticity of emotional expression over any kind of classical training. Today’s indie
“sounds like it was recorded 25 years ago, even though it wasn’t”, which can be both an
homage to the lineage of the sound as well as a product of the circumstances of an
independent musician (P.I.2). “It’s an intentional shit sound”; in ex-NME journalist Simon
Reynolds’ kinder terms, “an insistence on short songs, lo-fi, minimalism, purism, and
guitars, guitars, guitars” that honours the classic indie longing for a time outside of one’s
own (P.I.2; Reynolds qtd. in Fonarow 36).
Malin 22
The subject material of indie is another key component of its cohesive sound.
The modern indie audience might observe “a lot of love songs or songs about feeling
bad about yourself” (P.I.1); the second of these themes in particular runs through the
indie heritage from the start. It makes sense that as a post-punk Thatcher-era young
adult-driven genre, indie songs would be “often brooding and contemplative and
address the issue of not belonging” (Fonarow 54). This pathos, along with the loose,
guitar-driven instrumentation, sets “indie” the sonic genre apart from “indie” as a
description of an artist’s distribution.
INDIE | EVOLUTION
In comparison to pop and in terms of sonic cohesion, indie has not evolved as
drastically as pop has – the jangly guitar and DIY recording techniques that
characterised early indie are still a marker of indie music produced today – and a
sincere one at that. When modern pop music borrows sounds from the earliest days of
its genre, it is seen as a novelty or an otherwise cheeky callback to another time,
functioning as a kind of narrative device to get a certain tone across, relying on
listeners’ understanding of the time period being referenced. On the other hand, indie’s
modern variations contain clear and sincere traces of the original indie sound without
commentary. In this comparison, it seems that indie has more respect for its lineage
than pop – and lineage is crucial to the preservation of the indie sound over time.
The Britpop movement of the 1990s both began to normalise the indie sound as
well as build on it with more aggression or energy than its precedent sound. Along with
a change in energy, the indie artists of the ‘90s were with their instrumentation and more
Malin 23
popular with their sound: “by the time you get to Blur, they’re getting a bit more
proficient, but they’re still indie, ‘cause that’s the heritage they follow” (P.I.3). Many
artists – particularly bands – that are considered “indie” by a modern audience would be
seen as unacceptably polished on the 1980s scene. Scouting for Girls and Starsailor
are two early 2000s British rock bands who are “very proficient pop bands, and they’re
not really ‘indie’ bands at all, ‘cause they’re really good at playing their instruments,
they’re not scruffy, quite humorous, they’re not that alternative”, but it isn’t wrong to
group them in with modern indie bands because “they’ve come from that place” – they
followed Britpop, which followed indie (P.I.3). Although the indie sound has expanded to
include more electronic, polished, or mainstream elements, the shared heritage of the
Smiths to Blur to post-Britpop still binds the genre together. A modern indie artist
doesn’t even need to say it in an interview – their family tree of influence is clear in the
jangle of their guitar, the flowing undercurrent of their music, or their ironic lyrical belief
that they are all alone.
INDIE | MARKETING IMPLICATIONS
Indie is bigger now than it used to be – streaming and social media give a wider
audience faster, cheaper access to music they might not have discovered otherwise.
However, indie still has a more particular audience than, say, mainstream pop radio. A
certain pride persists in being an indie fan; from a perspective of long-term music
business experience, “the types of music that want allegiance to the genre are rock and
indie; the type of music that wants allegiance to the artist [is] pop” (P.I.3). Because indie
is not the mainstream default, its listeners must seek it out; they may be a little more
Malin 24
picky about what they listen to than pop fans. While the semantic definition of indie is
still the one that matters statistically on the charts, the sonic definition makes more
sense to use for the genre identity required in marketing.
INDIE MARKETING: PLAYLISTING
The specificity of indie’s sound means that playlisting is a more viable option for
getting new indie music discovered. The rise in small everyman-type singer-songwriters
garnering fame on TikTok assists the typically smaller nature of the artists populating
these playlists, especially when compared to their contemporary pop greats, so the
competition feels fairer. Indie’s broadness means that both its sonic and semantic
definitions can modify other genres, like “indie folk” or “indie pop”. Beyond that, Spotify
has a tendency to invent new, more niche microgenres like “indie poptimism” (“It’s
happy indie pop because you also have sad indie pop, right?” [P.I.2]), so when it comes
to playlisting, there are more specific options to pitch to, meaning a higher chance of
acceptance onto third-party playlists.
Understanding indie’s microgenres is the first step in a sort of work-backwards
technique to marketing new indie music. First, the artist should identify the type of
people who listen to their music, or whom they want to listen to their music, and which
subgenre those people are likely to identify with. Understanding how this audience
identifies, particularly socioculturally, can help the artist identify their music as a broader
category when they input it on a streaming service, and then to pitch it to more specific
third-party playlists to maximise reach. This technique may be useful for more
experimental or alternative indie sounds; it is worth consideration for upcoming indie
Malin 25
artists of any subgenre.
It may also be worth consideration for smaller pop artists who can identify a
strain of indie heritage in their own music. Because the indie genre can be identified by
a cohesive sound, “bands that do not have an independent label or independent
distribution to be considered by some to have membership within the indie community”
(Fonarow 39). Cross-listing as both indie and pop as two distinct genres should be an
intentional choice that remains honest to the sound of the music being listed; if done so
it is a viable way to open up a wider potential audience and break into the pop scene
from a different avenue.
INDIE MARKETING: SOCIAL MEDIA
As discussed in the pop section, social media is an important tool in connecting
an artist to their appropriate audience, and can also be used to help understand that
audience, which can inform marketing decisions going forward. However, the kind of
content that is effective in promoting indie artists on social media is different from the
relationship-building personality-showcasing content expected from pop artists
(although of course presenting oneself as relatable and interesting never hurts in
building an audience connection). Indie artists should focus more on live performances
of their music, rather than the lipsynching that is the standard of the pop crowd,
especially since the history of indie “is a bit more on the live scene” than pop (P.I.2).
A general pride in or “allegiance” to their genre and its lineage will also do indie
artists well on social media. Many artists on social media will compare their new music
to some older cultural touchstones – this is a good idea particularly for indie artists,
Malin 26
whose modern sound exists expressly because of the artists who came before them, as
with Starsailor and Blur and the Smiths. Even if indie involves more of an allegiance to
the genre than to any particular artists within it, a reference to an artist’s influences
helps ground their sound in the historical context of indie and legitimises them as part of
the genre’s lineage.
CONCLUSION
For marketing pop and indie music, it is imperative to understand the difference
between the genres’ semantic definitions (which are related to a genre’s cultural history)
and sonic definitions (which are related to the present sound of a genre after some
evolution). Of these two genres, “pop” is a bigger umbrella term, with modern pop
encompassing a number of commercial, surface-level relatable sounds and lyrics. Pop
music marketing is rooted strongly in its semantic definition of popularity through
personality and easily-accessible relatability. “Indie” may fit within an alternative bubble
as a genre outside of mainstream pop, but stands alone as a sonically cohesive genre
of its own. The sonic definition of indie is more useful for marketing the genre than the
semantic one, whose practicality is confined to popular charting artists. Being able to
use precise language when describing new music can help reach the most effective
potential audience to build a fanbase.
Further research could include building an understanding of “alternative” as a
genre of music, which did not quite fit into the scope of this study, as well as exploring
the sub- and microgenres that streaming services have begun to invent in order to
classify music in more specific ways. “Alternative” music could be studied in much the
Malin 27
same way as pop and indie – where does it come from? What does it sound like? How
do its fans connect with it? Studying microgenres would require an internal look at
music streaming platforms and potentially a direct conversation with someone who is
directly involved in developing and relegating these niche subgenres.
Malin 28
Appendix I: Research Methodology and Justification
This study consists of both primary and secondary research. One form of primary
qualitative research used is semi-structured personal interviews with the employees of
Autonomy Music Group. This technique consisted of a predetermined set of questions
that were asked in a loose order but were expanded upon, altered, added to, and
rearranged depending on the responses given. Personal interviews give a candid,
insider look at the music industry from a group of people with active working experience
and music education. To reduce bias from other colleagues’ input, interviews were
conducted on a one-on-one basis. To preserve anonymity, each interviewee is cited in
the text as “P.I.” (“Personal interview series” in the bibliography) with a number denoting
the order in which their input appears in the paper, to distinguish between different
responders.
It should be noted that the sample size is a small one and is potentially biassed
within a large scale because the interviewees are all members of the same company.
As a result, these interviews and their responses can be understood as a case study
within the London music business, particularly within this singular management
company.
Another form of qualitative primary research used was document analysis of
music publications. This technique functioned more to provide examples than to build a
historic foundation. I had access to a limited number of physical publications from my
boss’s archive. They each provide a direct historical snapshot of the music industry at
the time of their publication. This research also involves some rudimentary statistical
Malin 29
analysis of data regarding artists’ listeners and followers, with information from
Chartmetric, an online statistical resource used by music industry professionals to
observe trends in artist and audience data. Chartmetric compiles demographic and
other statistical data based on artists’ streaming and social media platforms, most
notably Spotify, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Its numbers are specific and accurate
within a couple of months.
The historical foundation of my research is built largely upon secondary
qualitative research involving document analysis of previous writings on genre. A key
text for building my understanding of the history of indie music was Wendy Fonarow’s
Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music (Wesleyan UP, 2006),
which is itself thoroughly researched and has been referenced in a number of other
academic writings on the subject of the British indie music scene.
Malin 30
Works Cited
“Adele: Audience.” Chartmetric, app.chartmetric.com/artist/3079/audience/summary.
Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.
“Arctic Monkeys: Audience.” Chartmetric, app.chartmetric.com/artist/2289/audience/
summary. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.
“Charts.” Music Week, 28 Jan. 2019, pp. 41–55.
Cordell, Frank. “Gold Pan Alley.” 1957. The Faber Book of Pop, edited by Hanif Kureishi
and Jon Savage, Faber and Faber, 1995, pp. 72–77.
Eagar, Rob. “An Insider’s Guide to Become a New York Times Bestseller.” Wildfire
Marketing,
www.startawildfire.com/insiders-guide-become-new-york-times-bestseller#:~:text
=Plus%2C%20there%20are%205%20bestseller,Book%20List%20%2D%2015%
20total%20slots. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.
Fonarow, Wendy. “What Is ‘Indie’?” Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British
Indie Music, Wesleyan UP, 2006, pp. 25–78.
“Genre.” Merriam-Webster. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genre. Accessed 9
Nov. 2023.
Knee, Sam. A Scene In Between: Tripping Through the Fashions of UK Indie Music
1980–1988. London, Cicada Books, 2013.
New Musical Express. 9 Sept. 1978.
Personal interview series. Conducted by Maggie Malin for Arcadia University’s INPR
310 class, 20 Oct. 2023–6 Nov. 2023.
[PIAS]. PIAS Recordings, 2020, www.pias.com/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.
Malin 31
“The Playlistification of Music.” YouTube, uploaded by Venus Theory, 12 June 2023,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDudbp-pag&t=1s.
Spotify. “New Music Friday.” Spotify. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
The Timelords. “The Golden Rules.” 1988. The Faber Book of Pop, edited by Hanif
Kureishi and Jon Savage, Faber and Faber, 1995, pp. 673–7.
“XXXTENTACION: Audience.” Chartmetric, app.chartmetric.com/artist/74419/audience/
summary. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.
