I have so many indie bands on my iPod. What I don't really understand is the attitude that if a band is unknown, they're good, and if they get fans, then you move on to the next band.
I wear glasses and suits, so I guess I am an indie artist.
Between the Dinosaur Jr. albums and his recent solo albums, 'Several Shades of Why' and 'Heavy Blanket,' J Mascis is emerging as one of the last men from all that '80s indie madness, still writing songs that you want to listen to over and over.
There's a certain type of indie fan who would balk at the prospect of there being value in pop music, but I think that's foolish. They're not really listening.
When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.
Some artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively - as a way of getting noticed, of getting your music out there where folks can hear it risk-free.
I think in the world of indie music there's this sort of false modesty.
I'm not going to say I'm not a fan, but I'm a fan of house music, essentially, and kind of indie, and I was always into the kind of sub-pop Seattle Mud Honey and Pearl Jam kind of sound. But my kind of big love was house music ever since I was 15/16, going to raves when I was 15 or 16 years old and not going to school, like a naughty boy.
Indie world won't have me, and mainstream world treats me like an alien, but here I am still floating between these two worlds.
The pirating thing is bad. The people it hurts the most are the ones you least think it hurts. It's not the big Britney Spears albums that are being pirated; it's the indie bands that don't have two cents to their name.