Genre Two - Indie Rock

Genre Two - Indie Rock:

The second genre that I looked at was Indie Rock as it is a very popular genre at the moment, with new artists and bands coming up all the time.

Indie Rock - is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the US and the UK  in the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music. In the 2000s, as a result of changes in the music industry and the growing importance of the Internet, some indie rock acts began to enjoy commercial success, leading to questions about its meaningfulness as a term.

In the mid-1980s, the term Indie Rock began to be used to describe the music produced on punk and post-punk labels. Some prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s. By the end of the 1990s indie rock developed subgenres and related styles including lo-fi, noise pop, emo, slow core, post-rock and math rock. In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream success.

In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped-down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock emerged into the mainstream. The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives and The Vines. 

Music Videos - In typical Indie Rock music videos the whole video is normally of a live music concert that they have done that has been filmed. This is because the artists normally have a niche audience so by involving the fans into the music video it shows the passion that they have for their fans and that they appreciate what they do for them. A key example of a rock indie band that does this is "30 Seconds to Mars". 

As well as this many rock indie bands use narrative in their music video to connect the fans also to what they're saying. Whether it be a story or to show the passion that they have for their fans. This makes the target audience that bands have in this genre be niche but they're very connected to the fans that they do have.  Bands in this genre with a niche audience mainly use social media to promote their songs as this is the main part of the distribution of the music. They rely heavily on world of mouth through people on social media to make sure that the albums and songs are shared. Bands rely on social media to promote their albums as they're part of an independent record label meaning the company doesn't distribute the albums as much it is down to the artists to promote their own music. 

Mise en scene - narrative and performance is used in most of the music videos to create a vast difference in what each video does to make it original which appeals to their particular target audience with it normally being a niche audience. Bands usually stereotypically wear rock star clothes in the music videos that they would wear at a concert. Their hair is usually coloured and in a punk rock way to relate back to the genre that they're part of. The lighting in the music video is usually light as the light in a concert is normally bright to make the audience engage into the concert. The lighting is also into the audience to make the audience feel like they're part of the concert with the band.

Indie rock is a sub genre and appeals to mainly independent labels as the audience is mainly niche, national audiences in the one country that that particular band or artist is  from.

Indie Rock is a fairly new genre of music with only very recent success with normally a very niche and national audience. I like that the indie rock genre is very individual and this is what makes me interested in this sort of music.