How the Indie Rock Boom Went Bust
Not so long ago, indie music was riding high, minting new stars and lasting careers with ease. But for a new generation of artists, financial stability is all but impossible.
Last year, Feeble Little Horse found themselves in an increasingly rare position amid the weary world of 2020s indie rock: on the brink of breakthrough success. Their second album, Girl With Fish, released on the legacy indie label Saddle Creek, received glowing reviews, including a coveted Best New Music distinction on Pitchfork. They were about to embark on their biggest tour yet, where they would play to thousands of new fans as they traveled from their native Pittsburgh to Brooklyn to Los Angeles. But then, just three days before that tour was set to start, they shut it all down.
“We have been blown away by all the recent support we have received,” the noise-pop quartet, whose members are in their early-to-mid 20s, wrote in a statement. “But for now we have to take a step back and reassess our little world for our continued health.”
Talking about the decision on a recent video call, Feeble Little Horse guitarist Sebastian Kinsler explains, “If we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be a band anymore.” Fellow guitarist Ryan Walchonski adds, “When we started making music, we didn’t have any lofty expectations. We were making it up as we went along. Then all of a sudden, you’re hit in the face with pressure that you didn’t plan for. It can be a little much.”
In the year since the temporary pause, Feeble Little Horse have resumed touring—including a slot at this year’s Coachella, a notoriously big-tent event that singer and bassist Lydia Slocum says radiated alienation from its desert surface. “It felt so commercialized,” she recalls. “The whole thing is just a background for photos. I felt completely out of place. I was like, ‘Why are they paying me to be here?’”
In conversation, the members of Feeble Little Horse are good-natured but reserved, displaying a casual indifference to any notion of a long-lasting future in music. “Wanting to make a career out of this would mean focusing on maximizing profit,” Walchonski says. “It comes with a certain sacrifice when you’re doing it less because you enjoy it and more because you’re reliant on it.”
“We’re pretty aware that we could make this our full-time thing,” Slocum adds. “But I put so much effort in high school to get into college, and in college I was trying to get good grades so I could get a good job. To stop all that and just do music would be a waste of that work. Do we really want to be 30 or 40 years old, playing the songs we wrote when we were 20? I don’t think that sounds fulfilling.”
As a catchall genre term, “indie rock” has long possessed a definitional slipperiness, emerging from the DIY and college rock trappings of the 1980s before attaining true generational caché in the post-Nirvana landscape of the 1990s. But the type of music—and musician—that most people now associate with indie rock came out of the genre’s commercial boom period earlier this century. It started with the strummy Garden State soundtrack in 2004, which went platinum, and reached a fever pitch with No. 1 albums by Death Cab for Cutie and Vampire Weekend—along with Jay-Z’s infamous “What the indie rock movement is doing right now is very inspiring” comment—at the end of that decade.
The start of the 2010s saw a steady rise in visibility for indie musicians that encompassed high-profile TV performances and the occasional collision with real-deal pop superstars. (The “rock” part of “indie rock” was partly left behind along the way, for marketing purposes.) Regardless of whether the artists involved were turning a meaningful profit, the smell of success was in the air. Indie’s boom period was, as Kevin Krauter of current Indianapolis indie rockers Wishy describes it, “an era where a popular indie band looked like they had it fucking made.”
It didn’t last. Indie’s commercial decline began to sink in around the mid-2010s—a point when music publications’ collective influence was waning, and streaming services took over as passive tastemakers looking to cut corners on artist royalties, resulting in the decimation of the music industry’s middle class. Then came the pandemic and its ripple effects, including increased touring costs and the persistent threat of canceled shows due to COVID cases. It’s all led to an indie business landscape that’s particularly inhospitable to emerging artists looking to establish careers off their work.
As with so many areas of popular culture, nostalgia reigns supreme in the 2020s indie sphere. The double-dose of Ben Gibbard that was last year’s Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service tour generated a level of millennial enthusiasm typically reserved for annual LCD Soundsystem residencies, while entire music festivals are now framed around a perceived “golden era” of indie. In 2024, being a middle-aged indie rocker playing decades-old songs on stage seems like one of the only sure things when it comes to lasting success.
Otherwise, the post-pandemic indie landscape has seemingly experienced a reset in perspective that feels more aligned with the no-frills, get-in-the-van attitude of the ’80s. “I never dreamed of being a musician because I wanted to make money,” says Chicago singer-songwriter Kara Jackson, 25, whose debut LP Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? garnered critical hosannas last year. “Growing up, I thought that was counterintuitive.”
The current lull has left industry figures scratching their heads. “I’m baffled by how truly difficult it is these days to introduce a new band and break them,” sighs Secretly Group’s Director of A&R Eric Deines, who’s worked across the indie conglomerate for more than 15 years.
He cites the white-hot buzz around post-punk act Merchandise, who signed with 4AD in the early 2010s following a heated bidding war, as an example of lightning-in-a-bottle enthusiasm that doesn’t really happen anymore. “Back then, we could discover things that nobody was paying attention to and have some sort of viable commercial success with them,” he says. “In the last three years, that’s gotten really difficult. You read a lot about the decimation of the middle class in general—there’s the very rich, and the very poor—and I really do see something like that occurring in indie rock. Either you become Phoebe Bridgers, or you’re grinding.”
Among the countless grinders, there’s a prevailing feeling that the pursuit of lasting financial stability—or even widespread media recognition—has become all but impossible. “The audience is shrinking for this kind of music, or maybe just music in general,” surmises Joe Trainor, 40, of the acclaimed Los Angeles weirdo-pop outfit Dummy. Alongside his work in the band, Trainor also freelances as a music publicist under his own Stereo Junk banner, and as an A&R for the left-field label Felte. When it comes to his PR gig, he says there’s been a “serious downturn” in the last year when it comes to ginning up press interest for his clients. “A lot of releases fall on deaf ears,” he admits.
There’s never been a precise formula for breaking out of the pack and attaining buzz, but for many in the indie sphere, achieving widespread visibility has increasingly resembled winning a lottery that you can’t remember buying a ticket for. Secretly’s Deines points to the runaway success of Chicago singer-songwriter Gia Margaret’s ruminative ambient-pop track “Hinoki Wood,” from last year’s Romantic Piano, as proof of the endlessly random nature of virality in 2020s indie. The song caught on via TikTok and has been used in more than 115,000 videos on the platform; clocking over 13 million Spotify streams to date, it stands as the second-highest streaming track released last year by Secretly Group. “You can’t predict that kind of shit,” he marvels, his voice underlying a tone of slight frustration. “You can’t make it happen.”
Many of this decade’s new indie musicians are skeptical of engaging too much with the biz aspects that led to the previous boom period, which was synonymous with nonstop and nearly indiscriminate branding. This shamelessness was typified by Austin’s South by Southwest festival turning its back on its scrappy origins and inviting Doritos to construct a stage made to look like a giant vending machine in 2012. It might have been the most extreme example of the era’s indie commodification, but it was far from the only one.
“All these companies were glomming onto these indie rock shows,” sighs Spencer Krug, who fronted the boom-era band Wolf Parade and currently self-releases music under his own name and with his recently reunited group Sunset Rubdown. “I remember looking out across the people at some festival and seeing these giant flags with ‘5ive Gum’ written on them everywhere. I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Things got a commercial in a way that we weren’t prepared for.”
In the 2020s, musicians are more prepared—and more willing to turn their backs on commercial opportunities that don’t align with their values. This year, it all seemingly came to a head when 28-year-old Chicago indie rocker Ella Williams, who records as Squirrel Flower, pulled out of SXSW after learning about the festival’s sponsor connections to defense contractors as well as the U.S. Army.
Williams credits the work of activist groups like Smash by Smash West and Austin for Palestine Coalition as catalysts for her call to boycott, which inspired more than 60 acts to take part and eventually resulted in SXSW vowing to cut their military ties entirely. “I felt sick about playing a festival that was platforming companies making the bombs that are destroying Palestinian hospitals, schools, civilian homes and murdering children,” Williams says. “I did not want to be associated with it in any way.”
As indie artists have become less likely to mindlessly partner with brands, many brands have also stopped investing in music. During the boom days, in Brooklyn at least, it seemed like Vans and Converse were hosting pop-up gigs every month and giving sneakers away by the ton. The atmosphere is less generous now. Feeble Little Horse’s Kinsler laughs off a recent reach-out from the clothing brand Ed Hardy, who asked the band to wear, in Kinsler’s words, “a collection that sucked.” The company didn’t offer the band any money; the band did not wear the clothes.
The decline of album sales as a revenue generator has also been deeply felt by music’s middle class across the last decade. It’s a phenomenon that dates back to the widespread proliferation of streaming services and the relative pittances they offer artists, obliterating another vital source of income for most indie acts. Mike Haliechuk of the veteran Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up experienced this aspect of the indie bust up-close. After signing with heavyweight label Matador in 2008, both 2011’s David Comes to Life and 2014’s Glass Boys placed in the 80s on Billboard’s album chart. But Haliechuk recalls the band returning to a desolate landscape with its next album, 2018’s Dose Your Dreams, which did not chart.
“We went from ‘We’re not selling any records’ to ‘No one’s selling records anymore,’” he says. “Our label was asking us to make a Spotify playlist, which I couldn’t see the benefit of. Why was that part of my job now?”
“Why is this part of my job?” is a question that musicians have been asking themselves more frequently, especially when it comes to the demands of promoting themselves on social media. As an artist who began releasing music in MySpace’s heyday, Spencer Krug, 47, finds himself occasionally feeling like he’s been left behind in an ecosystem reliant on platforms he barely understands. “I probably should have paid attention to social media—but I wasn’t worried about all that stuff, because [labels] were doing it,” he admits. “Then, all of a sudden, there’s all these levers that I’ve never pulled, and I don’t really know how to pull them.”
Across the 2010s, projecting a digital persona—selling your music by way of amplifying your presence on various platforms—became increasingly essential for artists of all stripes. But at the midpoint of this decade, as the promise of social media continues to curdle, artists express a growing reluctance to overshare for the sake of increasing their listener base (a proposition that is by no means guaranteed to be effective in the first place). Dummy’s Joe Trainor says he’s tried to “step back” from “speaking his mind” on Twitter, while Kara Jackson was on a break from the same platform when we spoke.
“Pedestals can be really dehumanizing, especially for a Black woman,” explains Jackson, who grew up online. “There’s a depersonalization, but also an over-familiarity with parasocial relationships. I have to unplug, turn it off, and actually lean into my real life to remind myself who I am.”
But the allure of TikTok, which still stands as the music industry’s shortcut to virality, beckons regardless. Jackson claims that her current label, September Recordings, implores her to make content for the bite-size video platform; she’s found compromise in occasionally posting videos that she says are “fun for me” to share, from tips for people who struggle with reading to unboxing festival performance outfits. “I’m not good at using it as a tool to promote myself,” she admits. “I always feel really silly, and I’m not the type of person to beg someone to listen to my music—but now I gotta do a dance in front of a camera to make someone listen to my album. It’s a little degrading.”
As the industry faces the same resource scarcity issues that are felt across other professions, artists are increasingly stretched thin. “You’re very literally becoming an advertiser,” says Mia Berrin, bandleader for pop-rock outfit Pom Pom Squad. “The pressure has shifted from being relatable to being a salesperson—and it should not be my job to get on the internet once a day and say, ‘Hey, if you like this person, you might like my band.’ I don’t enjoy doing it, and I scroll past shit that I see that does that, too.”
For all of social media’s pitfalls, it can also be an invaluable tool for artists in the indie sphere to speak up for themselves and against the industry’s economic status quo. In March 2022, indie rock sensations Wednesday wrote a Twitter thread about how they lost money after playing that year’s SXSW. Their candid accounting went viral, resulting in plenty of support. But in the realm of indie, where unrealistic struggle is often seen as a badge of pride, the thread also brought about a backlash. Feeble Little Horse’s Walchonski recalls being frustrated by some of the reactions to Wednesday’s disclosure. “You had all these old dudes who were like, ‘When I was your age, I slept under my van and heated myself with the exhaust that was coming out of it,’” he says.
Sometimes, the criticism comes from inside the community. Dummy found themselves involved in a minor uproar following the publication of a Bandcamp profile in July 2022 in which Trainor questioned the entitlement and work ethic of some indie artists amid a discussion of a Stereogum article pegged to Wednesday’s viral SXSW tweets. “You sat in your room and wrote a song,” Trainor said in the Bandcamp story. “That doesn’t automatically mean you get to make money. It’s insane. Just make your music for you. If people connect with it, that’s amazing. If they don’t, that’s okay. Not everyone who picks up a guitar deserves an audience, that’s just not how it works.”
The band caught some flack online for those comments. “There isn’t one correct way to tour,” drummer Marcus Nuccio of Chicago indie rockers Ratboys wrote at the time. “Every band has different needs and desires and everyone does it for different reasons.”
Reflecting on the hubbub now, Trainor tells me, “I think the fact that Wednesday’s star was rising, and we were a little band pushing back against them in some vague way, really rubbed people the wrong way,” adding that Dummy didn’t mention Wednesday by name in the article. He’s also quick to point out that, after Dummy’s van broke down later that year, Wednesday were the “bigger people” and posted the band’s GoFundMe for vehicle repairs: “It was very nice of them—they didn’t have to do that. They could’ve been like, ‘Fuck those guys,’ but they weren’t, and I will always have respect for them just based on that.”
Such gestures suggest that, in the midst of so many artists struggling on and off the road, a new sense of community has emerged from the collective frustrations of this decade’s indie class. Over the last several years, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers have engaged in various forms of collective action responding to concerns like Spotify’s paltry royalty payouts and SXSW’s low fees. Earlier this year, UMAW’s actions led to U.S. Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman introducing to Congress the Living Wage for Musicians Act, aimed at helping artists to build sustainable careers in the streaming era.
“Wealth inequality has increased exponentially, and many of my peers and I are paying 50 percent or more of our paychecks in rent—there’s no choice but to turn to community and collective power,” notes Squirrel Flower’s Williams. “It’s a result of our material conditions worsening and realizing that we must care for each other, because the government and the corporations will not care for us.”
Yet there is still skepticism about whether speaking out and offering online support will lead to real material change and mutual aid in the indie world. “There’s definitely artists that, out in public, are about community,” Dummy’s Trainor says, “but then you find out what they offer a support band is a joke, and you’re like, ‘Well, this is all bullshit, too.’”
The members of Feeble Little Horse are more hopeful, and say that the new generation’s financial transparency is leading to a better understanding among independent musicians. “It’s important to do your best to look out for one another as artists,” Walchonski says. “People have helped us as we’ve needed it, because the music industry can just chew you up and spit you out.” Slocum adds, “You’re kind of a loser if you think you’re better than everyone.”
With decades of experience under his belt, Spencer Krug is heartened by what he witnesses in younger musicians. “They’re better than we ever were,” he says, talking about having one’s theoretical shit together. “Musicians used to be so flaky, but young people now have such an amazing work ethic. They can sense that things are fucked and they can’t just skirt by.” Krug also acknowledges that the deck, as ever, seems to be increasingly stacked against those looking for a lasting and financially viable career making music as an indie artist. “It’s such a grind,” he says. “And it’s unfair to them that they’re gonna have to work that hard just to sustain a minimal, shitty living.”
Read more of Larry Fitzmaurice’s work at his newsletter, Last Donut of the Night.
