Why selling out has become perfectly normalised in today's indie music scene
The indie scene was once built on a siege mentality. But when film music has overtaken everything, does holding out for principles hold any meaning?
Independent rock music, back in the mid-2000s, had a lot of enemies. And precious few friends. You had to follow a list of arbitrary rules to be let into this super exclusive club led by embittered kids in their late teens or early-to-mid 20s (with some 1990s uncles still hovering). Embracing modern technology, for instance, and bringing a laptop on stage to play cool dhikchik beats? Jailable offence. “Hey!" some scruffy fellow from the crowd would shout at the early mover bands, an Orange Street or a Pentagram (where Vishal Dadlani cut his teeth before making half a name for himself as a fine Bollywood composer). The band would look up expectantly. And then he’d pelt them with a water bottle. “You’re a sellout."
Selling out was a huge deal at the time, leading to major scandals on the niche messaging boards online where all these conversations played out. But what exactly it meant was never made clear. I played in a band in Delhi in those days, and spent plenty of energy accusing other, more popular (but less handsome) musicians of this unforgivable sin. But even today, I can’t pinpoint exactly what that meant.
It had something to do with integrity, artistic morals, authenticity, success, intention, money—an impressive-sounding word soup that was entirely conceptual. To throw around such grave accusations without an explicit definition of the crime seems, now, a bit unfair. It was more of a mood, really. We were making it up as we went along, with feelings of envy and betrayal in lockstep with more righteous emotions of honour.
This was a transition period for what was a cluster of tiny scenes; things would soon change. A lot of stuff that, today, sounds so banal and trivial, was met with hysterical pearl-clutching at the time. For instance, money. Any band actively trying to make money doing what they loved could (un)reasonably be accused of compromising on the art. TV appearances, especially on those evil commercial music channels, were met with disdain. Sonic experiments by bands—anything beyond abrasive, uncompromising (unlistenable) rock or metal—were received with the infamous “BC-MC" chant that Mumbai would torment bands with. East-west fusion was one of the biggest enemies. Also an enemy: any band that sang in Hindi (like a two-bit Bollywood type).
There were a lot of protocols, but they all remained infuriatingly abstract. Success and money had to be earned the “right" way, with the “right" kind of fans appreciating the “right" kind of art. It sounds vaguely ridiculous today. And I do look back and shake my head at the sheer self-righteousness with which these things were said.
But there was, at the same time, a meaning to it. The smelly young men and women who comprised and gate-kept the small indie rock community had nothing going for them. No girl friends or boyfriends, no fans, no fame, no money, no gigs. No life. And so they clung even harder to the one thing they did have: their principles. Perhaps it was just a way to provide a unifying purpose to a disaffected niche movement with little takers outside of a loyal few. A way to find loyalty, solidarity, and community; to preserve something that hadn’t yet been afflicted with commercial desires. Misguided and foolhardy as that may have been.
The scene in India was built on a siege mentality. Us versus them. Bollywood—this was still before Rock On!! (2008) had come out—was well out of reach and too cartoonishly evil. The easiest targets, thus, were the English music channels. MTV and Channel V. They became stand-ins for all that was impure. All these sins were projected on to MTV.
They played English music, but only the terribly massy kind. Eminem, Britney Spears, *NSync. Even when they played rock or metal, it would still be inauthentic commercial fare. They’d play Metallica, but only the sellout, watered down, post-haircut version of Metallica. Unforgiven 2, not Master of Puppets. They’d play Indian indie too, on very rare occasions during the graveyard shift. But never enough.
Around this time though, things were beginning to change. There were a bunch of factors that led to some sort of shift in how culture was being consumed and received, a shift that, eventually, would lead us to where we are today. MTV, for example, used to be the perennial enemy, the lightning rod for all that was bad about art and life. But around the mid-2000s, that relationship began to soften. It became a little more complex, with one side (the scenesters) yielding a bit as the indie community began to grow and diversify. The spaces MTV occupied were now viewed with slightly less contempt. It was still the enemy. But was it also now, on some level, a friend? This enemy, too, upon the reality TV and social media 1.0 revolutions of the 2000s, began to seek out new ways to stay relevant.
There was a compromise to be made. Things were changing fast: Iron Maiden came to India. Social media allowed for exposure and exchange between fan and artist. People were beginning to take notice. Luke Kenny, of modest Bollywood fame, had been programming increasingly more daring rock music on Channel V. The same channel also had a reality show in 2007 called Launchpad. It was heavily criticised in the indie space, but it was aspirational at the same time, with dozens (or more) bands participating or sending in their entries. The two worlds—indie and the mainstream—were trying to meet in the middle. While still eyed with suspicion, there was a case to be made for a cautious embrace. A truce.
Now look at us. Does selling out even exist today? You don’t hear the term at all anymore. In the past, bands accused of selling out would get defensive. Lash out. Rationalise it sheepishly. Trap you in ironic cake-eating-and-having. Like Kurt Cobain appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine wearing a T-shirt that said, “Corporate magazines still suck." That concept has all but disappeared today.
While browsing YouTube, you’re likely to hear Parekh & Singh’s catchy 2016 sleeper hit (ish), I Love You Baby, I Love You Doll, playing behind a Spinny advertisement featuring Sachin Tendulkar. Ankur Tewari will do the soundtrack for a much-hyped but mediocre Bollywood film like The Archies. Even Vishal Dadlani, once the target of such caustic abuse for seeking out a career in Bollywood, is now just a respected composer who does interesting things. And that’s all totally fine; good even. There’s no judgement directed at any of these artists, randomly picked from dozens of similar examples.
Bands and artists are happy to broadcast handcrafted, media-friendly versions of their personality on Instagram reels and encourage parasocial exchanges with fans. It’s not that they’re willing to play the game, which would imply a compromise on their principles. Rather, there is no game to play anymore. The times—neither good nor bad—are different.
An article from 2023 by Dan Brooks in The Guardian talks of how the concept of selling out in the 1990s, “while central to my adolescent value system, was pretty much entirely bogus." It lacked “coherence" and “precision". Digital distribution, from the file-sharing renegades of the 2000s to the organised (looting) streaming services, has also changed things considerably. Artists from the indie world aren’t apologetic or ashamed about crossing over. And why should they be? The idea of enforced suffering, imposed either by audiences or by bands upon themselves, has been consigned to history.
Take the hugely popular hip-hop movement in India. You’ll come across work by rappers in films, in web series, in ads; it’s everywhere. Hip hop, of course, has its own set of rules around this kind of stuff, and the navel gazing that rock scenes are prone to is mercifully absent. Another article in The Guardian, from 2021, points out: “Perhaps the most significant recalibration of what it meant to sell out was rap ascending to total cultural dominance, its often aspirational, entrepreneurial mindset inspiring respect among fans."
An additional factor, I’d wager, is “hustle culture". Making money is no longer seen as antithetical to art; chasing the bag is aspirational. By any means necessary. Given the rise of tech bros as pop cultural icons, with money, power, excess, and glamour being celebrated across social media—which acts as a force multiplier—audiences aren’t as cruel and judgy about selling out. And artists no longer care: “Yes, I’m making money. Why is that a bad thing?"
And it isn’t. How could it be? But I do wonder: Have we overcorrected? Have we gone too far in the other direction? The views that indie scenesters held in the mid-2000s perhaps needed to evolve for the scene to grow. There had to be a conscious engagement with, not the mainstream exactly, but something outside of the micro-niche bubble, for the industry to sustain itself in a meaningful way.
But now, it doesn’t feel like there are any checks and balances in place. With the cultural shift now complete, and numbers dictating trends over all else, what happens to the art that we consume? We live in a time where the space to create and explore music is, for all practical purposes, infinite. But are we, at the same time, narrowing the space for creative expression with the absence of those annoying safeguards? Selling out, for instance. Obscure experimental movements across the country do still value these grandiose notions; those will never fully die. But is that shrinking now? Is punk rock dead now?
Akhil Sood is a Delhi-based writer.
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