just to expand on my points in my chart commentary this week, it seems to me that indie music is not the dominant force

it was in the UK now compared to three or four years ago...highly anticipated comeback singles from The Zutons and The

Fratellis have flopped while The Kooks, Last Shadow Puppets and The Pigeon Detectives have seen their songs peak high

and then plummet. When downloads were first included in the chart, people were worried that this would be the death of indie,

but in 2005 and 2006 this theory was proved wrong with the success of Arctic Monkeys and others I've already mentioned...

obviously there are exceptions to the rule, like Coldplay, but they are now superstars so the 'indie' rule doesn't really

apply anymore

 

is this merely the end of another cycle, like 1998 spelled the death of Britpop and the boom of pop/dance/r&b, or are there

other things going on accounting for this newfound failure of the genre...for example, why do indie/rock concerts sell out almost

instantly yet nobody wants to buy the singles and albums of these acts anymore...is illegal downloading actually killing the indie

genre quicker than other genres? I know for one, my sister is a rock and indie fan, yet watches the videos on YouTube, downloads

illegal MP3's and goes to countless concerts, yet hasn't bought a single or album all year...

 

obviously, Britpop singles and early 00's indie singles were famed for entering and plummeting quickly but why is it that they are

now the only genre that still sees this chart activity? the indie singles that are consistently popular now are so clearly pop music masquerading as indie, e.g. Hoosiers, Scouting For Girls, The Ting Tings...is this the sign of a pop comeback, or are people once

again tired of indie music as record companies manufacture acts to be 'cool'?

Indie fans have always been more aware of release dates than your generic pop fans and that's always explained the peculiar

chart runs of high entry and quick fall. They sell nearly all their copies in the first week.

 

Coldplay appeal almost even more to non-indie fans now, they crossed over at a very early stage - probably all the 'Cold Feet'

fans who fell in love with 'Trouble' when it was played ad nauseum on that TV show. So, you can't lump them in with The Kooks

and Pigeon Detectives - although, again, these bands have fans in the 'non-indie' spectrum.

 

Two other reasons for the perceived second album slump.

 

1. These bands sell more copies of their second album in the first week to fans who are now waiting for the album.

Their first albums were sleeper hits which enjoyed long chart runs but never sold as many in one week. Or, indeed, they

did a 'Hard-Fi' or 'Editors' and rose to the top 10 when their albums were £4.99 in January sales.

 

2. The bands were $h!te in the first place - that certainly covers The Kooks, Pigeon Detectives, Zutons and Fratellis.

Music has changed alot since Indie was big in the 90s and Indie acts may struggle to get airplay, which in turn affects

download and physical sales.

I dont think it's anything to do with the music, but purely down to todays music culture. People are not so excited about finding

the 'next big thing' that they forget about who was the last 'next big thing' a year ago. It doesn't just happen in indie either, the

'singer-songwriter' genre has been affected just as much, James Blunt, KT Tunstall, Sandi Thom and Natasha Bedingfield have

hardly set the world alight with second albums and Jack Johnson relatively flopped with the folow-up to his breakthrough. I highly

doubt the likes of James Morrison, Paolo Nutini or Corinne Bailey-Rae, Newton Faulkner, Lily Allen or Kate Nash will fare any

better.

It's even following on to more bigger acts now, Kanye West and Madonna haven't done much with recent albums either,

Goldfrapp's album hasn't done what I thought it might. It's not just in periods of one album to another either, but with singles

too and I think

it's all down to Radio 1 really; The View, The Enemy, Klaxons, Jack Penate, Reverend & The Makers and Pigeon Detectives were

all favourites of theirs last year, it got them a high peaking album and one (maybe two) successful single, but by the time they'd

moved onto their next new favourite no one cared about them any more.

 

You look at the people who've had success here in the past 18 months; Girls Aloud, Sugababes, Take That (well established acts),

Mika, Mark Ronson, Timbaland, Adele, Duffy and Amy Winehouse (mainstream newcomers). The only exception really is Rihanna

who's matured with age and got better and better all the time.

 

There are indie exceptions and there are three bands who I think are proving to be more successful long-term and they're ones

which have never really been touted as a next big thing, bands who've never been bummed to death by mainstream radio or

the NME.

The three are Biffy Clyro, Elbow and Kings Of Leon. None of these bands had loads hype, they only sold in smallish quantities,

but with every album they release they seem to release a bette album which gains new fans and sells more. I think Mystery

Jets could be the next in line of this type of band.

Edited June 4, 200817 yr by Mark.

Whats going wrong with indie in 2008?

 

 

One Night Only. thats what.

There are 3 main problems going on.

 

The first two aren't limited to indie acts.

 

Firstly, as said by RabbitFurCoat, the music media, especially Radio 1, are incredibly fickle. They'll go absouletly nuts

about an act for a month or so, get bored, and then they'll move on. The public also get bored from having certain acts

rammed down their throats who in reality have had limited success which doesn't justify the bumming. Adele is perhaps

the most recent example of this.

 

 

Secondly, there's also the issue of quality, and choice of lead singles.

Look at the acts who have struggled in the past year or so.

KT Tunstall, the Kooks, Natasha Bedingfield, the Zutons, James Blunt, etc.

In each of those 5 cases, they chose to lead with comeback singles/albums that didn't come close to the

quality/catchiness of their debut material.

"Hold On" sounded like a cast-off from the Eye To The Telescope album. For all the fuss over her image

makeover, KT's music hadn't progressed at all.

The Zutons and the Kooks succeeded by issuing tracks (Valerie, Naive, She Moves In Her Own Way) that had

cross-over appeal; they appealed to the Q readers and also to the mainstream pop fans. I don't think the same

could really be said for "Always Where I Need To Be" and "Always Right Behind You"; they lacked the catchiness

that would have appealed to the mainstream.

Natasha Bedingfield has gone right off the boil. "I Want To Have Your Babies" was just barmy and that alienated

a lot of potential buyers. "Soulmate" was dull. "Love Like This" had a nice summery vibe, but it all seemed a bit of

cynical attempt to cash in on the American market.

James Blunt was always going to struggle to come up with a track that would capture the imagination of mainstream

radio in the way that "You're Beautiful" did, and "1973" just wasn't up to it.

 

Thirdly, the indie market has been saturated for the past few years. There are too many mediocre indie acts out there

issuing out singles that would peak between 11-30 but still get bummed to death on the Radio 1 playlist. There's too

much competition, and it was inevitable that that at some point the indie market was going to have to shed some of

it's load.

 

Well first off I think illegal downloads has REALLY hurt indie music chart wise, moreso than every other genre, but this could

also be considered a good thing too, as it reaches their music to a wider audience. Indie music chart-wise doesn't really seem

to be pulling the strings at the moment, but gig sales and festival sales are at their highest, which is where all the money is

made so I don't think they're that bothered.

 

Also the standard of music is really poor. The Zutons new one? I can't even remember what it goes like. The Fratellis new one?

It could have just so easily slotted onto their last album. These bands got famous by NME bumming them, and now NME have

moved onto something new (Ting Tings, Black Kids etc. both of whom are doing well chart wise at the moment). Too many

bands are trying to be like what there is already out there (but this can be said for a lot of other music genres too) and then

when they release their material no-one wants to buy it as it's nothing people haven't already heard before, and you'll only

get your die-hard fans buying it.

You certainly have a point about things sounding the same. I personally just think things go around in cycles, indie has been

dominant (although we've only really had three or four number ones all decade that can be considered indie...) along with

singer songwriters and now people are bored of them. Now pop and r&b/hip-hop are becoming more popular again and I'm

sure in a couple of years people will get bored of that as there's too much of it. It's not as if it's differentiated anyway,

Taio Cruz, Chris Brown and Ne-Yo could quite easily be the same person as far as I'm concerened!

r&b/hip-hop has been the success story of this decade, especially from 2003 onwards...it's been absolutely everywhere and

doesn't seem to be disappearing any time soon...to my ears at least though, the genre has evolved and become more interesting recently, what with this synth-pop/r&b coming out from acts like Rihanna and Chris Brown...obviously there's still the turd like

Soulja Boy and Lil' Wayne but on the whole, its one of my favourite genres currently...I don't know if that's my music tastes

changing, or probably because of the increased pop/dance influences on the genre...

 

I just don't see people ever getting bored of r&b/hip-hop as it does seem to constantly evolve...mainstream indie seems to

evolve to a much lesser extent, and the market gets so saturated with so many bands that sound identical that a lot of them

flop now. And why do indie acts not seem to be able to pick good comeback singles...I can't think of one good indie comeback

single in recent months, yet I can think of tons of good R&B comebacks...

R&B stays strong cos its sound keeps evolving. Listening to an R&B record from 2000 like Jumpin' Jumpin' or Don't Think

I'm Not and you'll realise how much has changed. It keeps changing its sound to keep its popularity, whether borrowing

arabic influences in 2003, or heavily borrowing dance elements in 2008. Also, much of R&B nowadays sounds like pop music,

hence why artists like Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, Kelly Rowland and Britney Spears seem to blend in together.

Whats going wrong with indie in 2008?

One Night Only. thats what.

 

:rofl:

 

Dance, RnB & Pop are taking over again :w00t:

 

Like Xylem said they're changing they're style each and every year to make it sound fresh and New. Acts like Chris Brown,

Ne-Yo, Britney (Last name not needed :P lol) and Justin all have experimented with their old sound to make it sound fresh

and exhilirating for their new stuff. I know alot of people (Personally know) who didnt like any of the above mentioned artists

old stuff, but they like where they're going with their new stuff.

 

I've just basically said what Xylem said but in a less formal and lazier way :P lol

What's going wrong with indie (part 2)? - Scouting For Girls. :puke:

Whats going wrong with indie in 2008?

One Night Only. thats what.

:lol: I completely agree! It's when people label themselves "indie" when they CLEARLY aren't! It really gets on my nerves

(although I'm not very good with putting artists into different genres anyway so :unsure:)

What's going wrong with indie (part 2)? - Scouting For Girls. :puke:

 

Scouting For Girls are more Pop I dont think even they class themselves as Indie...

IMO, the answer is pretty simple - indie has always relied on small but loyal fanbases that send their songs to a high,

but brief, chart peak - with the physical market dying, that can no longer happen.

IMO, the answer is pretty simple - indie has

always relied

on small but loyal fanbases that send their songs to a high, but brief, chart peak - with the physical market dying, that

can no longer happen.

 

so then vidcapper, if that's the case, indie will never be popular again...do you think this will happen :o I'm sure if good indie

songs came along that caught the public's attention, they'd have no problem being huge download hits

 

people used to say that dance would suffer in the download era but just look at the success of Mint Royale...if a track is truly

huge, it will be big in whichever format is the dominant one at the time

I suppose the point about evolving is a good one, but there's so much evolvement in proper indie music, just not 80%

of the stuff that makes the Radio 1 A-list. The use of dance and pop towards indie has been done so well recently, and

I'm not talking about watered down c**p like The Feeling or Scouting For Talent. I'm talking about The Pipettes, Duke

Spirit, Noah & The Whale, Islands, Clocks, The Little Ones, Lightspeed Champion, Vampire Weekend, Rubies... It's just

that none of it sells even though I think all of those would've had just as big hits as the likes of SFG if they;'d been

promoted the same. Unfortunately they're not 'safe' enough, whereas the evolvement in R&B tends to come from

already established artists who'll get air/video play whatever...

people used to say that dance would suffer in

the download era but just look at the success of Mint Royale...if a track is truly huge, it will be big in whichever format

is the dominant one at the time

 

It has obviously suffered, instead of many of them entering the bottom of the top40 like they used to they completely

miss the top100 now.

IMO, the answer is pretty simple - indie

has always relied on small but loyal fanbases that send their songs to a high, but brief, chart peak - with the

physical market dying, that can no longer happen.

But the indie bands being talked about hardly fit that description, they've all had huge albums and massive singles

whose chartuns have been highly prolonged by downloads!

It has obviously suffered, instead of many of

them entering the bottom of the top40 like they used to they completely miss the top100 now.

 

very true, but its the same with most releases in general now. with only 4-6 new entries a week, dance, pop, indie

and all sorts of songs that would have been top 40 hits in 2000 are now like you say, falling short of the top 100