Thread: What to do about indies?

Posts: 4

Post by zeus November 1, 2003 (1 of 4)
I've been thinking of filing "indies" together under either a new "Independent" genre or a generic label of "Indepedent" (or both). Candidates for this are David Elias, Suitcase Pimps, the three ZoomTone titles and the latest one from Ruf Records:

http://www.sacdinfo.com/showtitle.php?title=1586

plus any others anyone suggests.

Whadya think? Would this offend anyone? I'd appreciate any input ...

Stephen

Post by randy November 4, 2003 (2 of 4)
I like the idea of creating a catch-all label of Independent. I agree that David Elias and Suitcase Pimps are good candidates for this. (I struggled with "labeling" these for my personal collection.)

On the other hand, ZoomTone fits in with my concept of a label, albeit an independent one. My first inclination would be to keep this separate.

But I am not being helpful, since your goal seems to be to create an easy method of identifying indies without making the database more complex.

Given the choice, I'd rather see "genre" used to identify indies. Give the indie labels their due.

Post by zeus November 4, 2003 (3 of 4)
randy said:

I like the idea of creating a catch-all label of Independent. I agree that David Elias and Suitcase Pimps are good candidates for this. (I struggled with "labeling" these for my personal collection.)

On the other hand, ZoomTone fits in with my concept of a label, albeit an independent one. My first inclination would be to keep this separate.

Here's what I decided to do. If the label is a private one dedicated to a single artist, these will be grouped under a catch-all label of "Independent". If the music is classified as independent (I'm not 100% sure what this means though), it will also be filed under a genre of "Independent". So the ZoomTone titles now have a genre of "Independent" but retain their own label because they represent multiple artists. Davis Elias' "Window" gets to have both "Independent" as the label and genre. Does this make sense? Let me know if you spot others that should be likewise filed.

Post by david elias November 18, 2003 (4 of 4)
This is very interesting reading! I have to defy-or-comply with the genre problem all the time. Originally it was stylistic issues about what kind of music I play (pick one: folk, pop, rock, jazz -- ugh). I started using the reference of "Independent Acoustic" as the best descriptive genre I could come up with. I still use this term. But when I have to pick from a list I usually choose either "singer/songwriter" (a more recent catch-all really starting somewhere back around 1970 with JT and others) or "acoustic" if I can.

But now it seems there's a similar issue just based on the career status of the artist. My definition of "independent" or "indie" means "unsigned": no record contract with a record label. But now they have independent labels that are small, medium and large...When does an independent label go from being independent to major (or minor)? Ani DiFranco did something with her own label Righteous Babe Records that was very successful. An independent selling well over 250,000 records!

I would hope that "independent" by itself doesn't singly represent many cross-section of music. Look at the SACDs that are now available on CD Baby. They span many genres of music from the acoustic to flamenco to rock. It's almost as if Hi-Rez should be a checkbox added to every genre. That's why I included the DSD and SACD logos on the spine of the SACD "The Window" (so you can tell by looking at it in your collection).

All in all, thanks for thinking about and supporting the "indies"! Esquire magazine recently wrote up Derek Sivers at CD Baby saying he had the record store of the future.

Best Regards,
David Elias

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