Thanks to the glorious power of the internet, indie music is not as underground as it used to be. The history of indie as we know it today is actually pretty fascinating.

Following the ’80s punk revolution, indie alternative mainly focused on quirky sounds. It was all independently produced, relied heavily on funky zines and was often as terrible as it was good. Some attributed the birth to places like London or Glasgow, but west-coasters like me think mainly of Sub Pop Records and Seattle, where Nirvana brought grunge into the mainstream.

To sum it up, the sound of indie meant independently produced music, which means there really was no official sound.

Time passed and genres became more pronounced. General indie diverged into a distinct new genre — indie pop. Subgenres developed as certain trends and tropes wiggled their way into the genre. But then the internet happened, and everything changed.

The internet made music incredibly easy to access, and for indie that was especially true. I was arguing with someone about what indie really meant, and I laughed when they said independently produced or just simply “underground.” Record labels such as Sub Pop aren’t as independent as they claim, with relatively big-name stars coming out of their labels.

The internet has allowed indie music makers to put their music out in a hugely public forum. The idea of “underground” has become obsolete, as anyone can Google a band and find its music. Whether or not groups rely on Soundcloud, start their own YouTube channel or are invited onto NPR’s Tiny Desk to share their tunes, anyone can find any band on the internet.

For example, here’s a hometown favorite. The Marshall McLean Band is native to Spokane, Washington. But it has fans all across the West Coast area thanks, in part, to the internet. In today’s day and age, we don’t just show up to the venue to hear the band. We Google them, listen to a few tracks and make a decision from that.

And in general, we don’t just stumble across a band organically. It’s suggested through our buying habits on Amazon, who we listen to on YouTube and what our friends recommend on Facebook.

What this means is indie sound is not contained to independently produced or underground music. It can even technically be popular music that we listen to on the radio. The 1975 is definitely an indie band, but is played quite frequently on pop radio and is incredibly mainstream.

Thanks to the power of the internet, indie is less about the attitude of independence and more about an overall sound. The accessibility of the genre is what it makes it so incredible that anyone can produce great music and have it listened to even from the across the globe. Maybe that isn’t the same devil-may-care attitude the first indie bands had, but there is an incredible freedom to putting something out there for public consumption.

Indie may have changed its sound, but it never forgot its roots.

Emera Riley is a sophomore magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at elril100@syr.edu or follow her on Twitter @emerariley.

Published on April 26, 2016 at 9:05 pm