As someone who works at an indie, my observation (admittedly without a whole lot of hard data, but from talking to others in the indie music biz and looking at sales figures) is that it’s incredibly difficult to quantify changes in sales due to file-sharing. Certainly some indie artists have attained a level of success in the past few years that would have been unimaginable a decade ago, but there are a slew of factors that have led to the wider acceptance of independent music–Internet exposure is one factor, but also the adoption of indie culture as a signifier of youth and hipness by old media outlets plays a major role. The success of films such as Garden State probably have influenced the sales of artists such as the Shins more than file sharing and Internet exposure have. While the Internet and file-sharing has certainly contributed to exposure for independent artists and probably improved ticket sales, I’ve seen no figures to suggest that sales for indie labels in aggregate have increased. In fact, sales seem to be stagnant, suggesting that there is a rate of attrition here, with additional sales received by increased online exposure evening out sales that have been lost due to file-sharing.

I’m just curious, when you talk about indie artists who have achieved previously unimaginable success, who do you have in mind? The Shins are an interesting example, but I agree that I don’t think of their story as being one that has much to do with file sharing. (Nor, actually, do I think their sound is particularly challenging — it’s not a band that I heard and thought “Wow, that’s something no major would ever touch!” — but that’s a matter of personal taste.)

Thanks either way for the thoughtful and useful feedback…

Here’s some hard data from the day job. Make it onto MySpace Music’s Top 10 list for Unsigned artists, and your artist page can get a couple thousand or more unique users (U.S.) in a month. For a hard-working local band, that can easily represent a larger audience than they can get in front of in a month’s worth of gigs.

What about merchandising? Ticket sales? I don’t have hard data here, but it seems to me that bands these days are making more from touring and merchandising than they used to, especially the midlevel bands, but also the big ones–the biggest revenue opportunities in the music biz have shifted from music sales to mechandising. I believe I’ve read about labels trying to grab more share of merchandising revenue from their bands.

I happened to catch a bit of Fast Times at Ridgemont High recently. There’s a scene where two kids go up to Mike Damone looking for Van Halen tickets. He offers them two for $20 each. They complain that they REALLY cost $9 each. That was 1982. Today, a ticket to see the VH reunion tour will cost you $125+ (maybe twice that from Mike Damone).

contrary4percent–Yeah, this jives with my observations as well, both from the day job and my experiences in an unsigned band. I think the musicians whose sales have really noticeably benefited from promotion via Myspace (and file sharing, and selling songs on iTunes and eMusic) are unsigned bands that have no promotional or publicity apparatus behind them. My old unsigned band’s sales, and the sales of a couple unsigned bands I’ve worked with, increased exponentially with the advent of Myspace and the increased usage of both legal download services and file-sharing sites–and that’s even without making the top ten on Myspace, which I imagine is a huge boon.

Murketing–on reconsideration, the Shins are probably not the best example. Interpol (now on a major), The Arcade Fire and M. Ward all come to mind as bands that at least started on indies that benefited from Internet hype and file-sharing at least on a word-of-mouth level, though their sales and visibility didn’t really explode until they were embraced by old media outlets–TV, glossy mags and even a tiny amount of terrestrial radio/Clear Channel play. I’ve observed bands with a fair amount of Pitchfork and blogosphere hype and Bittorent “love” that have sold an underwhelming amount, so I don’t think that a direct correlation can be drawn between Internet buzz and sales, either of physical or digital versions of the albums. The Internet buzz may prime the pump, but I don’t see any evidence that it’s directly increasing album or digital download sales.

http://imomus.livejournal.com/315200.html
here^, momus has made a chart of the amount of most-prestigious-albums per decade, according to the statistics of acclaimedmusic.net. this list does not differentiate between independent and major label releases, but illustrates the slump in music quality, according to music critics at least. “indie” is very broadly in and that makes for sales and success i would imagine.

I agree with the point about merchandising and ticket sales. As you say, that’s true for both mainstream artists and nonmainstream ones.

What I guess I still am not sure about is how different Internet word of mouth is from the word of mouth that pre-dated the internet. I’m not saying that I don’t think it’s different, it’s obviously different, but lots of bands got their start on indies and went on to big sales after mainstream embrace, well before the Web came along. And it seems to me I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal evidence of indie labels having trouble staying afloat these days — but there I’m breaking my own rule, relying on anecdotes instead of data.

I guess maybe nobody really tracks aggregate indie sales?

That Momus chart is fascinating, thanks so much for that, I hadn’t seen it, and I’m still pondering what it means/implies. I’m not sure I follow how there’s any implication in it of indie sales and success though. I think it’s right that as you say, “indie is very broadly in,” but it almost seems like a conceptual idea to me, everybody embraces the idea of non-mainstream music, and hating on pop, and all of that. But I would still like to know if that means that actual dollars flowing to independent music have increased.

I have seen stats in recent years that show indie share of marketplace increasing – which makes sense. But that of course doesn’t mean that indies are selling more music – just that their music sales may not be getting as hammered as the big four.

Ah, Mr. Kafka, I should’ve known you’d have some facts. So who’s the data-collecting source of record on this?

Speaking of getting hammered, I think I”ll call it a day.

Mr. Walker – believe soundscan is the keeper of record for marketshare info – at least for U.S. Congrats on new Fast Company gig. pk

Ah, Google! You can get a good sense of where things stand here:
http://clicknoise.net/digital-music-futures-and-the-independent-music-industry/
Probably some debates here about methodology, unit sales vs. dollars, etc. But to sum up: Yes, indie sales seem to account for ever-increasing percent of music sales — which are still declining precipitously.

I saw this article about a new study of the effects of digital sharing technologies on the music industry and thought of this thread:

Study: file-sharing leads to “chart churn,” helps indie acts
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071002-study-finds-new-music-dynamics-post-napster.html

Excerpt:
But the rapid turnover on the (Billboard) Top 100 has had an unexpected side effect: more albums from the independent labels appear on the charts, and those that appear survive longer than they had before. Releases from indie labels are still at a disadvantage compared to those from the majors, but the gap between them appears to have narrowed. Those who predicted that file-sharing would help popularize more obscure titles appear to have been on to something. The report suggests that this may provide an additional, cynical motive for the majors to combat file sharing: song swapping reduces the majors’ influence in the music market in a way that has nothing to do with lost sales.