4. Independent To What? Investigating The Complexity Of
4.5 Independent Modes Of Production And Interrelations To The Mainstream Music
Several academic theorizations of the notion of independent attempt in different ways to challenge these assumptions especially pointing out how the relations between independents and mainstream music industry need to be contextualized.
At first this relation needs to be contextualized because independent music is actually defined by its opposition to the mainstream music industry, and changes in the music industry will have an impact upon the independent music practices as well. As Kruse (2003) states:
Without dominant mainstream musics against which to react, independent music cannot be independent. Its existence depends upon dominant music structure and practices against which to define itself. Indie music has therefore been continuously engaged in a economic and ideological struggle in which its outsider status is re-examined, re-defined, and re-articulated to sets of musical practices (Kruse, 2003, p. 180).
The assumption enables us to understand how the definition of independent music is not only created in an independent culture by its members, but how it is dependent upon economic changes in the music industry, which affect a different definition of independent.
Therefore these authors challenge the common understanding not only of what it’s meant for independent but much more of what it’s meant for the music industry.
Many authors suggest that the music industry in singular form is in fact a misnomer (Toynbee, 2000) and that we could speak of music industries rather than the music industry as a whole (Cloonan & Williamson, 2007). Even though the music industry has always been defined as a cohesive entity, it has in fact a disintegrated structure: “music industry in its integrity is a discursive construct because its functions have never been together” (Toynbee, 2000, 19).
Additionally instead of depicting the music industry in oppositional terms to the grass-roots making practices, it’s suggested how all these practices are incorporated within the music industry. As Frith summarizes it:
The music wouldn’t exist in any forms we know it, if it were not for the industry. I think rock’n’roll, you have to view it as a, as, so wrapped up to capitalism that you can’t separate the two…And so, you make records. And you sell records. It’s a product. You turn into a music commodity. And the second you get onstage, you want to
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get paid for being onstage and the second you want to make a record you’re tied into that process (Frith, 1981, p.
34).
Several studies (e.g. Negus, 1992; Hesmondhalgh, 1996, 1998, 1999) suggest how the relations between independent music production and corporate music industry have not to be seen in such oppositional terms but rather there are different interconnections among them.
If in a common sense understanding independent music practices are perceived outside of the music industry and as being part of music scene, authors such as Negus (1992) point out how the music industry is instead made of a “web of major and minor companies” (Negus, 1992, p.17) and that what differ between them it’s a matter of dimension rather than of ethics and attitudes. Negus (1992) points out the interlinks between majors and indies and analyzes the ways in which major labels in the 1980s created semi-independent record labels, in the sense that these were record labels which belonged to the majors but were producing independent music.
Negus argues that the distinctions between major and independent record companies are difficult to be maintained because of the interlinks with licensing and distribution deals, investments, buyouts of the company. Afterward in Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (1999), Negus explains the “tensions between indie and major do not so much involve conflicts of art versus commerce or democracy versus oligopoly (as sometimes portrayed) as distribution struggles - battles to get recordings to the public” (1999, p.58). According to the author, it’s merely a question of distribution and licensing deals rather than one of aesthetic or ethic principles. Negus’s assumptions are exactly oppositional from the one presented before, because in his perspective, possible distinctions between indies and majors are in terms of industrial and economic processes, of what Strachan (2003) names ‘industry’, rather than emphasizing the social discourses and ideologies of the independent culture. Besides Negus’s (1992, 1999) analysis is focused upon the corporate music industry, which assimilates small independent organisations without looking from the perspective of independent labels which remain as such.
On similar positions, it’s the interesting perspective of Hesmonshalgh (1997, 1998, 1999) who tries to give a different viewpoint from the one of Negus, but still considering the importance of looking at economic and organizational processes. Hesmondhalgh’s (1997) analysis goes in the direction of theorizing the punk ethic looking at its modes of production.
According to Hesmondhalgh (1997), the DIY ethic in the 1980s and 1990s attempts the
89 democratization of music production, in the sense that it was based upon values of access and participation, cooperation and collaboration.
By providing the examples of several independent record labels in UK (Rough Trade, Mute and Factory Records) the author addresses an important question: are these independent labels able to provide an economic sustainable alternative to the mainstream music industry? The issue is very important in understanding the notion of independent because it enables to point out how some ideological assumptions need to be negotiated in the practical conditions of an economic, political and cultural situation.
Hesmondhalgh (1997) explains in detail how the independent labels were differing from the major in terms of their organizational structures. Hesmondhalgh’s approach enables to explain how the DIY ethic has some industrial and economic consequences. In order to guarantee egalitarianism indie labels were based upon a contractual system that allowed a 50:50 split of the royalties, on the contrary of the majors in which the artist was owner of the 19% of the royalties; this was not directly beneficial for the artists because in an egalitarian system revenues were equally divided between artists and staff. Secondly in order to protect the artistic autonomy and to avoid the exploitative deals of the majors, the artists were trading in short term financial security rather than the long term as majors. Contracts were usually not signed by musicians and records owner as a mark of trust.
In the attempt to democratize the music industry, the DIY ethic of the ‘learn as you go alone’
encourages access in the music industry of unskilled and untrained people in a mainstream music industry which was instead traditionally highly trained. This has consequences in terms of organizational and managerial skills. Hesmondhalgh (1997, 1999) leads back the financial crisis of some of these indies such as Rough Trade to organizational inefficiency at the label (1997, p. 267). As he suggests “their story indicates some of the problems associated with professionalization and growth in cultural institutions founded on an amateur ethos” (1997, p.
267). He finally suggests that post-punk ethic has failed in the democratization of the music production. The attempts of British post-punk independents to challenge the music business were haunted by conflicts, inefficiencies and contradictions, even though network of production, distribution and manufacturing was set up.
In following articles Hesmondhalgh (1998, 1999) shows how independent labels started with the 1990s to develop different strategies, and to interact with the mainstream music industry, therefore becoming more similar to the majors in terms of entrepreneurial skills.
90 He explains the way in which the major labels, understanding the creative value of independent (dance) music, started opening sub-labels hosting independent dance music, the
‘pseudo-independents’ (True, 1993, quoted in Hesmondhalgh, 1998), in order to compete with market of the ‘real’ independent labels. The author outlines:
The motives involved in such professionalization and partnership are more complex than is implied in two discourses which have been prevalent in the indie sector as a means of explaining these processes: ‘sell-out’, which assumes that independents abandon previously held political and aesthetic commitments for financial gain; and ‘burn-out’, which is slightly more generous to independents and which assumes that institutional alterity can only be maintained for a short period before human and financial resources run dry (1999, p.36).
According to the author, the discourses and ideologies gravitating around the indie sector are not able to explain the reasons of possible collaborations with the corporate music industry, which allow more professionalization, access to an international market, bigger economic rewards, possibility of dealing with risk rather than “a way of living which is difficult for many people to sustain: a constant existence on an impoverished margin” (1999, p.42). For Hesmondhalgh instead:
Countercultural discourse clearly overstated the opposition between the two ideal-types, majors and independents. Nevertheless, it is perhaps premature to dissolve the difference altogether.
The most important task in an era of unprecedented collaboration between small and large firms in the cultural industries, is to specify the relationships carefully (1998, p. 237).
These processes can’t be reduced to the oppositional relationships between indies and majors, as the author states:
The processes at work here are more complex than those represented in the narrative with which many musicians and fans make sense of such dynamics: the familiar story of 'authentic' styles which are co-opted by Machiavellian capitalists (Hesmondhalgh, 1998, p. 27).
There are instead more issues to be taken into account, particularly the ways in which the ideologies and practices of music producers are affected by “wider economic and organizational factors… In other words, discursive, psychological and aesthetic factors were applied in circumstances delineated by the economic logics of the cultural industries”.
91 This point is particularly important because it enables us to understand how the cooperative or oppositional relationships to the music industry can even be affected by broader economic, technological or cultural changes, and can’t be understood in the ideologies indies versus majors. Hesmondhalgh (1999, 2002) for example makes reference to the fact that in a post-fordist economic environment, corporate cultural industries are much more networked to small cultural industries, and they are often outsourcing their production to them. I will come back to this issue later, but it’s important to notice that the independence can be influenced by technological, economic or even political changes and, as both Negus (1992) and Hesmondhalgh (1997, 1998, 1999) point out, by a changing attitude not only of the independent sector but even of the corporate music industry.
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