Indie Is Officially Dead: Arcade Fire Win Album Of The Year Grammy
Indie music, as a genre, and as an ethos, has been atrophying away in the last decade.
You know as well as I do, that the rise of digital music has made it easier and easier for anyone with an internet connection to access all types of music. The Arcade Fire, have reaped the rewards of this change, to such an extent that yesterday the “indie” band from Montreal won the Grammy for Album of the Year. A position usually reserved for overblown major label albums.
So can we all agree that indie is officially dead? At least in it’s classically idealized philosophical way. This is not because the Arcade Fire have betrayed their fan base, but with their win they have smashed through the glass ceiling of indie music. Album of the year, from Merge Records? It’s an interesting world indeed.
People will still use the word “Indie” to describe a style of music but the idea that an indie band must struggle against the “industry” to get anywhere is a dead idea.
The world is flat. A great song, a great record, a great video, a great record label (read: Team of passionate and hardworking people who love your music) is all that you need to get to the top…of the mainstream press. If that’s what your looking for.
Music Consciousness
Voyno
Category: Music Business Commentary
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I wouldnt say its dead or even dying… Id say that this is a break through for Indie; I believe that the next five years will be interesting. Look at this way, pop is declining as in record sales are falling, it does not appeal to real music lovers who want more than a song that is catchy and about bling. And with the record labels dying more and more artist are going to indie. I predict the next five years will be the decline of major labels and the rise of independent artist because of the Internet.
[...] There is no denying that The Arcade Fire’s third studio album The Suburbs has made a significant splash. It was release to both critical and commercial success, reaching the top of the US Billboard 200 for the week of August 21-28 of 2010, made many critics’ year-end best-of lists and most recently garnered the band’s first Grammy win for Album of the Year (a win which caused the blog The New Rockstar Philosophy to proclaim Indie is Officially Dead). [...]