Whether someone is a pretentious enthusiast of obscure music in the hopes of seeming as musically literate as possible, or merely a casual listener of those suspiciously up-your-alley songs from unrecognisable artists recommended by Spotify on a random Tuesday, they can’t deny the fact that the world of indie/alternative music is being appreciated and given the opportunities to grow now more than ever—thanks to our increasingly digital and globalised media landscape.
Even though these terms are often used interchangeably, “alternative” is more of a description of sound and popularity used to categorise music that does not conform to mainstream conventions, whereas the term “indie” is indicative of an artist or band’s record label affiliation. In the simplest of terms, “alternative” is whatever is not pop and “indie” is an artist who records and releases music independent of major record labels.
Although Indie and Alternative may be considered two different categories of music entirely, I have often seen them being grouped together nowadays as one, particularly due to the implication of artistic freedom closely associated with both. Music that does not comply with mainstream conventions and prioritises creative freedom is often recorded by smaller, non-commercial labels which means that a lot of alternative music is recorded by indie artists. This is where the intersection and confusion come from as these two things become more and more synonymous. Keeping this in mind, along with the fact that indie and alternative often overlap—e.g. a majority of Mitski’s music is often categorised by critics as Indie Pop, Alternative, Indie Rock, or a combination of both (i.e. Alternative/Indie Rock)—Esha and I concluded that it might be a good idea to pick Indie/Alternative as the vast category of music we would pick our final song from for the music video promotion package.
Since the nature of the Alternative/Indie genre is rather nuanced, I’ve compiled below a number of excerpts from my internet research that deepened my understanding of it greatly, highlighting key terms that particularly aided this understanding:
After all, Spotify has made me way too many custom Indie/Alternative playlists for us to have not chosen those as our selected genres.
(Yes, I made a really lame TikTok meme about this instead of studying. No, I don’t want to unpack what that might say about me :O)
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