The Aleatory Dynamics of Independence: An Analysis of 2 West Coast Music Lables by risa
by Christian Bertelsen
“Me and the Major could become close friends cause we get on the same train and he wants to talk me, […] me an the Major don’t see eye to eye on a number of things, […] he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t try, he knows there’s something missing and he knows it’s you and I.” Belle Sebastian “Me and the Major” If You’re Feeling Sinister.
The terrain of independent music, just as with cultural industries in general, is an environment punctuated by vicissitudes, contingencies and struggle. Thus, Stuart Hall is right to point out that a “danger arises […] [when] we tend to think of cultural forms as whole and coherent,”1 because the terrain is much more complex than those adjectives might intimate. Therefore, just as Bernard Miège does in his article The Logic at work in the New Cultural Industries, it is important to identify the social logics2 at work amid these terrains. He urges us to take up such examinations even though in doing so, “one runs the risk in proposing such a reading of confusing temporary, contingent shifts with long-term trends.”3 One theorist who has certainly stepped up to the challenge is David Hesmondhalgh. In his article Flexibility, Post-Fordism and the Music Industries, Hesmondhalgh seeks to limn the dynamics of how independent/small record companies operate within the music industry. As he focuses primarily on British markets, one is left wondering whether or not the same conclusions can be drawn about American markets.
Therefore, by charting the development of Subpop and Epitaph Records, this analysis will first take up some of Hesmondhalgh’s arguments and reveal how they might fit within an American context. Both of these labels—because of their distinctive trajectories, lend themselves particularly well to a ‘compare and contrast’ type of analysis. This examination certainly does not claim to provide an explication of the American independent music industry in general, however, careful consideration of these labels might be useful in establishing a starting point.
Identifying the Terrain
The experience of being an independent record company in either an international or domestic milieu might be likened to the experience of having been a soldier involved in the D-day landing in Normandy. In such instances, one is generally called upon to enter a zone where far more powerful forces are ensconced. To survive within such unwelcoming loci, one is often called upon to make their moves based on circumstance—based on aleatory opportunities as they present themselves. The fiscal demands associated with both the international and domestic music industry are such that it is not uncommon for independents to fold or be forced to make a deal with a major label. The pressure of having to make a deal with the devil, so to speak, is a tension that has loomed over independents, for various reasons, over a number of decades; some of these issues span from questions of access to costly technology in the 1950s, (4) to those of the licensing, funding and distribution needs experienced by independents today.
In his article, Hesmondhalgh’s goal is to call into question the appropriateness of using the terms
flexibility and post-Fordism to describe the new dynamics of contemporary cultural industries. Moreover, he also wants to reveal that many of the debates regarding flexibility do not sufficiently consider the complexity of change and—as a result, many such analyses neglect the continuity that exists within the cultural industries. This in turn, requires us to carefully consider what assumptions we have about market fragmentation and the relationships between independent and major record companies.5 By examining some of the criticisms of flexibility writing, Hesmondhalgh demonstrates that it is not always entirely accurate to use these terms when explicating the recent developments in the music industry.
According to Hesmondhalgh, one of the problems that is symptomatic of most flexibility analyses of cultural industries, is that they focus far too narrowly on the aspect of production. In Christopherson and Storper’s examination of the film industry, flexibility—as they describe it—was a practice whereby large film corporations, in a response to market forces, began outsourcing production work to sub-contractors—who were themselves agglomerated near these corporations.(6) The problem with Christopherson and Storper’s production-oriented analysis, is that their use of flexibility connotes the idea that there is a “collaborative and consensual”(7) relationship between the corporation and the sub-contractors—almost to the extent that the sub-contractors gain a certain power in the industry. But Christopherson and Storper’s argument is compelling only because it focuses solely on the production element. Once considerations of distribution, exhibition and finance are broached, Christopherson and Storper’s study then seems to be incomplete and misleading. Further analysis of the distribution, exhibition and finance spheres tends to shatter this quixotic perception of the corporation and sub-contractor relationship, because it reveals how corporations—despite delegating production responsibilities, ultimately retain the power inherent to these spheres. Invoking Aksoy and Robins’ insights, Hesmondhalgh underlines how “the logic of transformation in the entertainment industries is centred around processes of reintegration and globalisation.”8 This reorganization applies equally to the music industry insofar as large corporations adopt the very same processes and have the effect of precluding independent record companies from ever really posing a challenge to their dominance.
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