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Totally with ya bro! We used to be a tribe AGAINST something and making our own thing. So diluted now.
I'll reply better nxt time I'm sober.
Ya cunt - in first.

Obviously the Taylor Swift thread provoked a lot of debate the other day and I was surprised to see some of the people in that thread defending her music. Personally I just don't get the appeal of her music, but I also didn't realise she was such a crossover act in terms of her being liked by people who would usually gravitate towards less commercially successful music.

In terms of "indie principles", I do think that the evolution of the music business and the internet has changed the game a lot. I think most music fans are far happy to pick and choose acts to listen to from a variety of different genres now. It takes two seconds on YouTube to find something totally different to listen to and that freedom of choice (and more importantly, almost zero cost of choice) means that people probably just listen to a wider diversity of music than they did ten years ago or so.

Take Frank Ocean for example. If he had released Channel Orange 10 years ago, I probably wouldn't have listened to it because my main music at that time was indie rock and I would have had to pay £10 for the album and risk not liking it. Now I hear people raving about it, and even though I don't usually listen to R&B I can put Spotify on and give it a go.

There's just far more of a "pick and choose" culture now with music rather than people just listening to certain genres. Everything's a bit of a mash-up.

Deal With It.

This happened when 'indie' stopped meaning 'independent'.

It's now more indie to not be indie.

I know that's probably an unfair statement so I'll reconsider it.

I think the real problem is that the indie scene with so many microlabels and microscenes trying to promote bands that it's getting increasingly hard to find the genuinely good, interesting and groundbreaking independent music because there's far too much choice and not enough reliable information to decide what to listen to. Certainly I seem to find fewer and fewer new bands each year that I get excited by and have seen so many threads on DiS (and lots of other places - I'm not blaming DiS or in any way claiming it's unique in this) where someone's getting excited about some new band and I listen and I feel they're not doing anything particularly new, interesting or good that I pretty much feel like giving up searching for new bands 'cos it's so hard to find things.

Pop music on the other hand is available, accessible and there's a simple (if not infallible) democracy to it in that (due to the nature of the genre being an appeal to a mass demographic) quite simply the better a song is, the more likely it is to be hugely popular and so the more likely you are to hear it...

I think the other major thing is the death of mid-level indiepop bands/independent bands doing songs with large fanbases and mainstream crossover potential in recent years, largely I think due to the fact the music scene's structured in such a way it's very very hard to crossover from being an independent band to reaching a mainstream audience and the bands that tend to get the most attention now tend to be the ones that reach a specific niche and reach out to that so become popular within that particular niche but they aren't necessarily the ones that will have wider appeal cross all independent music fans, much less all music fans. So that gap for music that's pop but also indie (e.g. New Order, REM, Blur) has all but disappeared so people tend to go for some independent music because there's less around (or less easy to find) that functions as both.

They used to be such awesome elistist snobs. Then they said it was OK to like Justin Timberlake. And before you spit out the title of a Fiona Apple record, indie hipsters were getting Mily Cyrus tattoos on their ball sack. Tsk.

people who like indie music are criticised for being 'too particular' or too cool for pop music, and rebel against this idea by listening to more and more chart music. this is it; they simply want to make it apparent that they aren't snobbish and arrogant.

called it

who has an ethos in this day and age? you know who had an ethos? the National Socialists did, that's who

why should no one get stick for listening to indie rock, grindcore, grime, techno, ambient, hip hop, power violence, jazz, classical, or any other genre, but pop music should be lolworthy on here?

i'd hesitantly say that pop music is only a few posters 'favourite genre', but it just happens that everyone will have heard the big stuff and have an opinion on it. and if something's massively popular, you'd expect more than a few people to like it too.

get over it.

then yeah, I'd say that house is falling into the sea.

until everybody stops saying "indie".

I just stick up for and buy things I like whether that be BATS, Britney or Baths. I grew up on pop but had my indier-than-thou phase in 1992. But pop is great. It got overplayed back in the day but not sure that's the case so much now and a good pop song will reach, unite and entertain more people than the average indie track ever will.

There was definitely a trend of people seemiingly ironically liking some utter shit pop a few years back. But the genre upped it's game in the mainstream. Seriously, look at 90s pop and it's awful. No wonder the mainstream turned to indie. But now that's passé too.

In this day and age, the times of scenes and movements within musical genres is long gone it seems.

Basically, I'd say either some people are a bit sad if they pretend to buy stuff to be cool and likewise it's a tad tragic to think that everyone who doesn't think the same as you is lying.

Some of the songs got stuck in my head, and not in an annoying way. If Kiss FM played Xiu Xiu and Saturday Looks Good To Me, I'd probably have got into them.

SO ENDS THE STORY OF HOW I GOT INTO POP MUSIC.

it's called indie.

The band with the biggest indie ethos on the planet are doing massively well right now

Just such a shame that their music is shite

Arise Sir Mumfluff

Also, the biggest selling artist on the planet right now ie new mum Adele is on an indie with proper indie roots and a proper indie ethos but with a very successful roster of artists including probably "this generations'" crossover/midsize indie champions The XX

That Taylor Swift thread is proper disgusting but don't let it distort the reality of what's happening around you

If you want to talk about conformity being the new rebellion or the mainstream zapping our independent taste sensibilities then we could tackle it on the /really/ troubling level - Homeland

realised they couldn't keep up so decided that indie just wasn't cutting it anymore and moved onto what their hear on radio 1 at their dull office jobs
obvs

but i'm 31 now and frankly it's been a long long time since i believed in the indie ethos. I think it's equally as bullshit as the ethos underlying pop music, so any ideas of tribalism are completely moot.
10 years ago or so ago that idea of tribalism was on some level pretty important to me i guess, and i would have probably have disregarded POP music as it didn't fit with my identity. I guess that's a phase i've grown out of so now it's just a musical free for all.

do Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, the National, etc, etc, not count then?

If you're deliberately shutting yourself off from what's on the radio/in the charts because just because you want to project some kind of 'indier than thou' image, then you're a bit of a moron, frankly. (speaking generally, not directly at you!)

Some people just need to get over their hipster bullshit and enjoy the tunes. And not in an ironic way.

Point is, there's countless tons of great music out there, and if some of it isn't that hard to find, then why is that a bad thing?

When I was a teen I was anti pop

then I hit 21 and realised I was being totally dismissive and narrowminded & whilst I dont seek it out the moment I catch one that's great I'll play the hell out of it and I've discovered some very enjoyable records as a result.

on elitism and a sense of worth earned from liking more obscure bands than anyone else, then thank fuck it's dead

a far cry from meaning that you are signed to an independent label.

Other than that honestly who cares. It's what happens when something crosses over into the public domain. If the band/artist still interests me I will still listen to them. If they start "phoning it in" then I will lose interest.

are equally as open minded, and dont get angry/confused/upset when Arcade Fire win a grammy. Or call everything they dont like shit and just noise.

isn't it?

my girlfriends mum heard me say that i was happy my new housemate blasts the pixies in the morning and she said what is that, a kids program. I said they were a revered 80s punk band, but really they are more indie... alternative punk rock rock indie rock what the fuck are the pixies? I fucking hate genre's, fuck off genre's.

Is the only question that really needs answering here.

http://i.imgur.com/LWe9n.jpg

Go back a few years and you'll find the boards stroking each-other off over who loves Girls Aloud the most.

to find and instantly listen to music you will love

conversely, it's HARDER to get through everything you might love because there's so much, so you often have to impose stringent specialisations to what you seek

it's harder to passively consume what's put in front of you, directly recommended &c without an internal critic saying 'you could be doing so much better!'

there are bands everywhere making great (or crap) music but you have to put in the hours, you have to sift, you're a prospector now

what I mean to say by this is that I can well imagine why there's an urge to lash out against what's put in front of you (i.e. pop) and those who consume it unquestioningly, but fuck it, it's their world and their life and who are you to call them out

if you sense an erosion, take the time to resurface your listening habits

nuff

To those who say your taste in music doesn't matter or is inconsequential, I question why you choose to post on a music forum in the first place. Music is one of our most important forms of media. It has the power to influence how people identify themselves and shape their opinions, and defines at least a part of you as a person, whether you like it or not.

Thing is, I don't buy this 'golden age of pop' thing. I'm not saying 'twere all better in my day, I'm not a nostalgic person, and there's always been peaks and troughs, but it just seems to be at such a nadir at the moment. The recent shake-up of the music industry seems to have clogged up the charts with X Factor/American Idol here today, gone tomorrow types, homogenised American starlets in the Beiber/Swift mould, and all manner of samey European house music with no-mark guest vocals. It seems such an odd time to be increasing the focus on chart pop music. The best pop songs are always the curveballs, in my opinion, and these people have no intention of throwing any of those. 'It might smear their lovely career'. I don't think there's any shame in not wanting to align with that world on principle, even if the music was good enough - which it isn't.

And finally, not listening to pop makes you boring - bullshit. I find a lot more joy in any Everything Everything track than say, Only Girl In The World, which sounds cold and robotic to me. There's nothing boring about refusing what is foisted on you and seeking more interesting horizons. It's a lot more boring to just go along with what every other fucker likes.

People describing indie/rap/metal/electronica - as 'essentially a pop song' -

Translation: My very conception of the nebulous genre 'pop' is far wider and more malleable that yours, bow to me, for you will never know the intricacies of recorded sound on a level comparable with me.

"A great [identikit] pop song written by 9 people, 7-8 of them industry experts, tailored specifically to make money and nothing else, is a great song. Deal with it."

Stop lowering the bar.

I'm simply stating my opinion which, like yours, is highly valid.

Represent.