What exactly is indie music?
Independent music
Independent music (often referred to as indie music or indie) is music produced independently from commercial record labels or their subsidiaries, a process that may include an autonomous, do-it-yourself approach to recording and publishing. The term indie is sometimes used to describe a genre (such as indie rock and indie pop), and as a genre term, "indie" may include music that is not independently produced, and many independent music artists do not fall into a single, defined musical style or genre and create self-published music that can be categorized into diverse genres.[1]
Lo-fi music
During the 1990s, the media's usage of the word "indie" evolved from music "produced away from the music industry's largest record labels" to a particular style of rock or pop music viewed in the US as the "alternative to 'alternative'". Following the success of Nirvana's "Nevermind" (1991), alternative rock became a cultural talking point, and subsequently, the concept of a lo-fi movement coalesced between 1992 and 1994. Centered on artists such as Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Beck, and Pavement, most of the writing about alternative and lo-fi aligned it with Generation X and "slacker" stereotypes that originated from Douglas Coupland's novel "" and Richard Linklater's film "Slacker" (both released 1991). Some of the delineation between grunge and lo-fi came with respect to the music's "authenticity". Even though Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was well known for being fond of Johnston, K Records, and the Shaggs, there was a faction of indie rock that viewed grunge as a sell-out genre, believing that the imperfections of lo-fi was what gave the music its authenticity.