Pseudo-Underground Indie
With a user bases of over 100 million, Spotify offers music enthusiasts free streaming services for a diverse range of genres and artists. The global network allows artists to submit their own music for exposure to a larger audience. Spotify is often the route taken by struggling indie artists in order to broadcast their product. The website pre-selects playlists so precisely that Indie can be split into four different subcategories. One of these being “Underground Indie”. Hepcats’ significance continues to influence the organization of music genres onto a cyber platform. There, users can unearth “underground” songs that have been noticed by the website’s algorithm as rising tracks.
This pseudo-underground indie contradicts its own genre because how is it considered underground when it's promoted towards a rising audience and recognized by a mass music marketer? If a song is truly underground, it would it remain exclusive to a small population, not elevated to a profitable demographic. If a song is considered underground when it debuts, surely it eventually graduates to a mainstream category. Therefore, independent artists will be predestined for the pedestal of popular musics if they decide to embrace their growing fame. Yet, where is the line between what is considered underground indie and popular/mainstream indie? Where is the seam between 10 listeners to 10 million listeners? It’s too difficult to measure the exact number of listeners surpassed where a song qualifies as “popular”.
