The Success of Indie Music Essay

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Indie Music

What makes indie music special in the music industry is the fact that it is produced outside the studio system. Indie artists rise up out of obscurity through their own grit and determination, their own ability to publicize themselves and gain traction, their own talent and genius, and their own development of a fan base. Unlike the many artists today who are groomed from childhood—their fans brought to them via a range of media conglomerates with overlapping boards of directorates, their music written for them by ghost writers, their look developed for them by stylists, their persona created for them by marketing specialists—indie musicians carve a name out for themselves via the tools of the 21st century—social media, streaming services, and DIY (do-it-yourself) merchandise. One of the legends of the indie music scene exemplifies the raw talent and tenacity of this particular group: Daniel Johnston, who recorded his songs on a tape deck in his parents’ basement, handed them out to customers at the drive-thru where he worked, made a t-shirt that ended up being worn by Kurt Cobain on MTV and suddenly saw his fame skyrocket, his songs getting covered by a range of popular artists. Today, the indie music scene is even different from what it was when Johnston got going in the early 1980s. Today, the ability to get one’s name out there just as a bedroom artist like Clairo far surpasses anything that could have be done in the past. This paper will show how indie musicians today—bedroom artists like Clairo and the actor-turned-singer Childish Gambino—build a brand/identity for themselves by developing relationships with the public via social media and through the development of their own fan base thereby build a relationship with the music industry.

Justin Bieber is not an indie artist—but he got his start as one. Justin Bieber was discovered by his agent on social media. As Schawbel notes, Scooter Braun saw Bieber on YouTube and arranged to have the young boy meet Usher, Braun’s partner in Raymond Braun Media Group. Bieber ended up signing a record contract with Island Records, sold millions, won Grammys, made millions, and now boasts more than seven million followers on Twitter and 20 million followers on Facebook (Schawbel). Bieber catapulted from social media, barely a young tween indie artist, to being a celebrity virtually overnight—thanks to the keen eye of a manager-producer and the packaging talents of the music industry, which present the Biebs in a good light for fans to fawn over.

Bieber, however, does not do the indie music scene justice, as he was barely even anything when Braun discovered him. He is just an example of how social media is used today to help get people’s music careers started. A better example of how indie musicians do it all, develop their songs, music videos, fans and reputation without any initial help from the music industry is the duo of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, whose debut album won a Grammy and whose 2013 song “Thrift Shop” went straight to top of Billboard’s charts. The duo directed a music video that got more than 40 million views when it dropped on YouTube, and their sudden swelling of a following got them enough clout to get a contract with the music industry: “backed by radio-promotion muscle from Alternative Distribution Alliance and Warner Bros.,” Macklemore and Ryan Lewis became the biggest indie artists to find mainstream success since Lisa Loeb did it with help from actor friend Ethan Hawke (Horowitz; Feeney).

What made everything work for Macklemore and Ryan Lewis was a combination of ingenuity, artistic talent, understanding of social media, technical skill, and the most important thing of all in the indie world—the DIY mentality. Instead of waiting to get discovered like some Justin Bieber, they went out and announced themselves to the world with a full-on press. Social media helped them to cultivate their brand and status, and from there they were able to show Warner Bros. that they could command attention. Warner Bros. then got them air play on the radio, which put the duo in the minds of radio-heads, and the rest was history.

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Self-promotion was at the heart of it all, though—and self-promotion is what the indie music scene has generally always been about.

What social media has enabled to happen is for indie artists to take self-promotion to a whole new level and really reach new audiences, develop a brand and a core of followers, and create and share music videos to help sell the brand and the songs. Today’s indie artists show that “the heart of the industry, the record companies,” may not be quite as important as they used to be (Shuker 9)—at least, perhaps, the recording studios. Today, everyone can have their own personal recording studio with the right software and an iMac. Pro Tools gives every indie artist the same level of gear as professional recording studios—so in that sense, yes, the recording industry is less powerful today than in the past. However, there are many other aspects to the recording industry—studios themselves are just a drop in the bucket. Where the music industry is still dominant is in “publishing; music retail; the music press; music hardware, including musical instruments, sound recording and reproduction technology; tours and concerts, and associated merchandising (posters, t-shirts, etc); film, television, and MTV; and royalties and rights and their collection/licensing agencies” (Shuker 10). The music industry is part of the overall culture industry, a term coined by Adorno Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School (as Shuker points out). The culture industry is responsible for putting up the big bucks to get ideas, images, sounds, moving pictures out into the public arena. Movies cost money to make. Songs cost money to be played. The culture industry covers a lot of ground to manage all of that, as it essentially has a monopoly on the means of production and dispersion. Or, as Garnham puts it: the culture industry uses “the characteristic modes of production and organization of industrial corporations to produce and disseminate symbols in the form of cultural goods and services, generally, though not exclusively, as commodities” (25). For an indie artist to break into the culture industry and establish a relationship with the music studios is really nothing short of miraculous—and, yet, today it is just about par for the course thanks to the influence of social media and the ability of indie artists to market themselves and show the studio executives that they have enough brand appeal to invest in and start promoting on the big stage.

One can look at Childish Gambino for instance. Donald Glover, Jr., has been a performer since his 20s. He self-released music albums to build his indie status before eventually signing with Glassnote Records in 2011 (Mench). However, Glover did not really make it big as a musical artist until he dropped the song “This is America” as Childish Gambino through a joint effort with Saturday Night Live, where he was guest hosting to promote his work on a new film. The song and video suddenly catapulted him into a limelight that the music industry could build on. Through his indie roots and his ability to market his musical talents through his acting celebrity connections, Glover used his status to develop a relationship with the music industry. Similar to what Macklemore and Ryan Lewis did when they produced their own music video and dropped it on YouTube only to see it go viral, Glover’s video for the song “This is America” went viral with over 400,000,000 views since its release in May of 2018. With that kind of traction, Glover did not have to do much convincing for the culture industry to sign him. However, Glover was really only able gain so much….....

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Works Cited

Feeney, Nolan. Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop’ Is First Indie Hit to Top Charts in Nearly Two Decades. Time, 2013. http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/25/macklemores-thrift-shop-is-first-indie-hit-to-top-charts-in-nearly-two-decades/

Garnham, N. “Concepts of culture: Public policy and the cultural industries.” Cultural Studies 1, no. 1 (1997): 2-37.

Horowitz, Steven. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Crash Radio With \'Thrift Shop\'. Billboard, 2013. https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/1484126/macklemore-ryan-lewis-crash-radio-with-thrift-shop

Mench, Chris. But I\'m Not a Rapper: Everything You Need to Know About Childish Gambino\'s First Three Mixtapes. Complex, 2015. https://www.complex.com/music/2015/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-childish-gambinos-first-three-mixtapes

Schawbel, Dan. Inside the Brand of Justin Bieber: An Interview with Manager Scooter Braun. Forbes, 2011. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2011/02/11/inside-the-brand-of-justin-bieber-an-interview-with-manager-scooter-braun/#102a73565628

Shuker, Roy. Understanding Popular Music Culture. Routledge, 2013.

Zoladz, Lindsay. “The Curious Case of Clairo.” The Ringer, 2018. https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/7/25/17610744/clairo-diary-001-music-industry

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