Chapter 2: Indie

When it came to figuring out what genre my song fitted into I had to use sites such as Wikipedia and a certain site called Last.Fm which is an online music service which were my main sources of research. They both had one genre in common. Indie Rock, a sub-genre from Indie music.

Wikipedia:

Last.Fm:

The term Indie Rock is often used to describe the means of production and distribution of independent underground music where artists are known for maintaining control of their own music and their careers. Bands like Radiohead, Death Cab For Cutie, Franz Ferdinand and The White Stripes were mainly signed to independent labels then as their career began to rise signed to major record labels. Indie originated in both the UK and USA in the 1980s and developed from Rock Music. This style of music is a 'Do-It-Yourself' type of approach and many countries have an extensive local indie scene even when Indie music was not mainstream. This popular genre has grown over the years and is now one of the most dominating genres of all time. The line between Indie and mainstream is blurred increasingly throughout the years as we now see Hip Hop and RnB taking center stage. Indie is often played in heavy rotation on college radio stations and has bee referred to as 'College Rock' and 'Art Music'. When I was doing my research on Indie I found a quote from a website that i found very informative to an extent that was more understandable than many other definitions given:

"Indie Rock is like pornography in a way: most people can tell you exactly what it is, but they know it when they see it. Er, hear it. It's loud and obnoxious (or quiet and polite), careless and sloppy (or meticulously composed), complex and pretentious and to its fans, cooler and more relevant than any other style of music. It's impossible to list all of the bands who have been influential to indie rock -- doing so would require more space than we have here and would undoubtedly start some petulant silent feuds. One thing's for sure: It's cool! "

Source: http://www.epitonic.com/index.jsp?refer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epitonic.com%2Fgenres%2Findierock.html

I also wanted to become familiar to other Indie artists around and so through Wikipedia and Last.Fm I was able to find the following Indie artists/bands;

• The Fray
• Editors
• Florence & The Machine
• Jack Penate
• Jamie T
• Reverend & The Makers
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs