Indie Music

Indie music has derived from “Independent”, and is commonly used to describe any band which has a low budget and have a do-it-yourself attitude. In the case of a music video the video would look home-made and exactly what the band would like to portray themselves as. As for the music it allows the band to explore sounds which wouldn’t be as easy with the interference of large record companies and the need to appeal to mainstream audiences.

Indie music itself is not meant to have a direct sound, it’s meant to span over different genres, such as indie-pop and indie-punk. An example of early 80s indie is R.E.M and toward the 90s bands such as New Order. During the 00s with the rise of iTunes and YouTube indie bands became much more accessible and therefor more mainstream. 

The concept of indie music has been blurred and now is considered a genre on its own. Most indie bands are influenced by each other which produce a similar sound. Usually, indie music is can be considered a form of soft-rock and in many cases is performed by a band. Regularly it includes a simple but original guitar riff with another guitar riff layered to complement it. However, there is still a large range of indie music with considerable differences, for example The Arctic Monkeys have a completely different sound to a band such as Mumford and Sons. Bands are often still distinguished by falling into different sub-genres, which still hold the same typical conventions noted above. For our band we want to fall under a 'indie rock' genre.

A few of the most popular artists are The Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian and The Killers. Aspects of these bands are very similar:

Especially as due to personal style, as from the image above they are all shown to often wear ‘smart-casual’ clothing, merging what is smart and comfortable to appeal to an audience. This image is therefore connoted with this genre, and very rarely any others. 

Like in the picture, the indie genre is known for using muted colours and black and white in clothing, band photo, art and music videos. This would therefore suggest that a band doesn’t wish to stand out to just anyone, just to those who enjoy the music genre and would therefore understand the connotations. Due to the use of this we have decided to use either beige colour for our main colour scheme in our music video or make it black and white. 

Demographics from YouTube give an insight into the target audience which we should aim for.

From this I discovered that the age could range between 13-44 years and appeal to both a male and female audience. Indie music has been shown to be most popular in the United Kingdom and the United States, though there is a lot of interest in many English-speaking countries. Though, due to the bands I searched for, the bands which have more recently became famous appeal to 13-24 year olds, suggesting that fans are often dedicated to the band. But at the same time the band would also pick up new fans. 

To conclude, in our music video we plan on following some of the traditional styles of indie music, whilst combatting others. Aspects that we wish to use are the colour scheme, so fans will instantly identify with it. We also wish to follow the simple style aspects of the band. However, due to the size of indie music and the genres within it we will be challenging certain connotation when it comes to the music choice. Our Target audience will be to both males and females of the age 13-17 as more often than not the top audience numbers come from this age range. 

By Rebecca Gatfield