Indie rock's slow & painful death (Guardian article)

[Soul Adventurer]

Sales figures suggest alternative rock is in a dismal place right now. Will it ever recover? And should we care?

"This year's Brit awards will be a melancholy experience for indie fans. The genre's big performers on the evening will be Blur and Noel Gallagher, a pairing that will evoke memories of the 1995 ceremony, when Britpop swept the old guard away, and thus highlight the contrast with the current state of play. The latest issue of Q magazine opens its review of the new Maccabees album with the rhetorical question: "Has there ever been a worse musical climate to be a guitar band in Britain?" The past is another country. The British public buys guitar music there."

"Just before Christmas US music writer Eric Harvey compiled a list of sales figures for the top 50 albums in Pitchfork's end-of-year poll, inspiring the Guardian to conduct a similar exercise (see below). Each list prompts much the same conclusion. Of the five albums in Pitchfork's list that sold more than 100,000 copies in the US in 2011 only two (Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes) are indie artists. In the Guardian's top 40 the only alternative acts to pass 100,000 (the benchmark for a gold record) are Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Noah and the Whale, PJ Harvey, Radiohead and Laura Marling."

"Of course critics' polls are not an authoritative measure and other indie artists exceeded 100,000 sales in the US (including Wilco, Feist, the Black Keys, the Decemberists, My Morning Jacket), the UK (Elbow, Kasabian, the Vaccines, Snow Patrol, two Gallagher brothers) or both (the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead). If you really stretch the category then Coldplay, Foo Fighters and Florence + the Machine also did the double, and if you count 2010 releases you can add Mumford & Sons and Kings of Leon. And let's note that, because of Spotify and YouTube, sales figures aren't the only measure of success. That said, it's still an unforgiving climate for the kind of crossover alternative rock act that not so long ago was taken for granted, especially when so many of the bands mentioned have been around for a decade or so and selling to loyalists rather than new fans. This sobering data invites two questions: how long will indie's big slump last? And does it matter?"

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Indie rock's slow and painful death | Music | guardian.co.uk