The Rise of the 'Yupster'

[ratioci nation]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10663349/site/newsweek/?rf=technorati
 
 Jan. 9, 2006 issue - Music fans, rejoice: "list season"â??that wintry instant when our nation's critics whittle a year of records into tidy top 10sâ??has come again. According to the album-review aggregators at Metacritic.com, Bob Dylan scored highest in 2001. Tom Waits took '02, '03 was Led Zeppelin's year and Brian Wilson owned '04. So who's winning this round? Some guy named Sufjan Stevens. That's "SOOF-yawn"â??in case you haven't heard of him.
 
 Stevens's success (and the dinos' decline) neatly sums up a year that saw "indie" rock suddenly selling to scenesters and suits alike. In November '04, Conor Oberstâ??the genre's poster boyâ??snagged the top two spots on the singles charts, and Death Cab for Cutie's 2005 record "Plans" debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. Despite a dip in overall sales, indie labels now claim 27 percent of the music marketâ??their largest share in recent memory. "This year, there's a real consensus around 10 records," says Adam Shore of Vice Recordings. "And they're all this type of indie rock."
 
 Connoisseurs are crediting "Yupsters"â??Yuppie hipstersâ??for the change. (Need help? Take a look at "The O.C.'s" Seth Cohen, who stocks his Range Rover with Death Cab discs.) For the past decade, indie records sold primarily to obsessives because, without major-label distribution, the music was tough to find. But now a few clicks and an iPod are all it takes for would-be Yupsters to indulge any curiosity. Just ask Metacritic's eighth-ranked act: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. A year ago they were unsignedâ??and unknown. But hot MP3 blog Stereogum.com posted a track in February. In June, Pitchforkmedia.com gave their debut a rare 9.0. Now they've sold 50,000 CDsâ??one of which provided the cube dwellers of NBC's "The Office" with the soundtrack for a recent BBQ. "We're at a crossroads," says Stereogum's Scott Lapatine. "Indie bands are gaining in popularityâ??and indie Yuppies are using the Web to discover them."
 
 Expect the hybrid to thrive in 2006. Audi now advertises on Pitchfork. John Varvatos crafts custom Converse. Apple is set to unload as many iPods in the next three months as it sold between '01 and '04. And on Feb. 6, Sufjan Stevens will vie for indiedom's just-invented answer to a Grammy: the New Pantheon Award. Who knows? Come next list season, you may even be able to pronounce his name.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

In other words, indie is the new mainstream.

[you be betty]

see, what makes me freak out while i read that article; is that it's so, so true.  
 
 
 take cover...

[kosmo vinyl]

Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
  In other words, indie is the new mainstream.

this assertation is driving me crazy... indie is not actually that mainstream currently. if indie is defined as a record company independent of a major label and you use gold and platinum records as a measure of mainstream success indie isn't doing very well.  the biggest selling "indie" record of late was the Garden State soundtrack which went platinum released of course on a major label, the Postal Service went gold along with a couple emo bands including Dashboard Confessional.  
 
 in the UK and in the past indie labels had more mainstream success then they are now.  Although Depeche Mode, Franz Ferndinand, New Order, etc are mainstream acts in the US, they are or have at one point been successful indie acts in the UK mainstream.
 
 in the 60s indie record labels like motown had mainstream success.  the chances of any US indie act having "mainstream" success is slim.  most mainstream music buy r&b, pop, country and lots of christian music... the rock slice of the pie is something like 20% these days...

[kosmo vinyl]

Originally posted by pdx pollard:
 
 Stevens's success (and the dinos' decline) neatly sums up a year that saw "indie" rock suddenly selling to scenesters and suits alike. In November '04, Conor Oberstâ??the genre's poster boyâ??snagged the top two spots on the singles charts, and Death Cab for Cutie's 2005 record "Plans" debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. Despite a dip in overall sales, indie labels now claim 27 percent of the music marketâ??their largest share in recent memory. "This year, there's a real consensus around 10 records," says Adam Shore of Vice Recordings. "And they're all this type of indie rock."
 
 

can DCFC still be considered indie rock if they are signed to a major?  can Vice Recordings be consider indie given thier ties to Atlantic records?
 
 also keep in mind that the widly successful Kidz Bop records are indie label releases, would how much of the 27% they occupy...

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

Isn't this Seth Cohen guy in high school? If so, how can he be considered a "yuppie"?

[Julian, Alleged Computer F**kface]

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
  can DCFC still be considered indie rock if they are signed to a major?  can Vice Recordings be consider indie given thier ties to Atlantic records?
 

No and yes, respectively.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

Doesn't "indie rock" just mean a particular sound to most people at this point.
 
 Like "alternative rock". What was it really an alternative to? When it started, it was an alternative to hair metal. Soon thereafter, it became the mainstream.
 
 

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
   

 [/b]

can DCFC still be considered indie rock if they are signed to a major?[/QB]

[kosmo vinyl]

if thats the case then you need to change the statement to read "indie rock is now mainstream", and while it get plenty of mainstream and indemedia coverage it's still not selling mainstream quanities... don't really see the million people who went out to buy the garth brooks cd at wal-crap as picking up DCFC on their way out.

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

I don't see the people buying the latest Tom Clancy novel picking up the new Zadie Smith or Nick Hornby books, but they're still all mainstream.

[Bombay Chutney]

I'd change the statement to "indie rock is no longer  underground."  It may not be selling at Garth Brooks levels, but it's certainly on everyone's radar now - including record companies.
 
 Of course, you could argue that it was never really underground in the first place.

[sonickteam2]

Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer:
  In other words, indie is the new mainstream.

i think mainstream is the new indie.

[ggw]

Congolese thumb pianists are the new indie.

[kosmo vinyl]

Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
  Congolese thumb pianists are the new indie.

that and recently unearthed jazz concerts from the 40s

[Charlie Nakatestes, Japanese Golfer]

If you're talking about the Monk/Coltrane album, that was 1957.
 
 

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
   

Originally posted by ggwâ?¢:
  Congolese thumb pianists are the new indie.

that and recently unearthed jazz concerts from the 40s [/b]