The History of Indie

Indie music is a sub-genre of alternative rock.
In society today 'indie' is probably the most popular genre of music, it has been taken from 'independent music' which is a term used to describe the independence from major commercial record labels.

The beginning...

When Indie music first appeared it was a genre of music that satisfied those independant of what was considered to be popular music, the dominating genres. Consequently so called 'indie bands' weren't signed to major record labels. Instead they controlled and managed themselves in the promotion, production and performing, like the Arctic Monkeys they often refused the help of any commercial record labels.  A huge impact on the movement was Velvet Underground who were actually involved in the early part of the movement who achieved everything themselves from productions to albums, this created a dramatic deviation from the traditional styles of music. Although Velvet Underground wasn't as successful as they had hoped and could possibly have been had they accepted help from the record labels they are considered today to have been highly influential people in breaking the existing boundaries for future bands. Moving on form the 1960's in the 70's & 80's along with fashion music made another leap into independance gaining sub-genres such as "progressive-rock" and "alternative", which all upheld the ideology of indie music being different from what is regarded as "mainstream" by representing slight diversions from what was considered to be "popular music". This belief and ideology however was jeopardised in the 90's when so-called "indie bands" began signing to major record labels rather than staying true to the original ideology of independant music. This therefore affected the indie genre entering it into mainstream genres.

However like many things, over time this has changed. The relationship between music and ideology has been questions. What was originally known to be "indie" which was a representation of an ideology deviating from social trends couldn't have ended up more opposite. Indie music is now considered among other musical genres as simply a "style of music" rather than an ideology. This change is down to one main thing, the audience that Indie music attracted has grown significantly to a point whereby Indie bands can sign to commercial labels and become just as successful.