This (lengthy) article is in response to Douglas Haddow’s article, “Hipster Culture: The Dead End of Western Civilization,” which can be found here:

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

Hats off to Douglas Haddow.  His recent article on hipster culture pretty concisely sums up the reason why most people hate them.  Hipsters summarily piss all over everything that every subculture has hoped to achieve in the last 55 years, and it is a legitimate gripe.  However, what is more disturbing and less-known is how the shaping of hipster culture not only derides our past, but is rapidly accelerating its undoing.

Most of us know by now that hipster culture is strongly anti-subculture, sort of a “sit down and don’t be counted,” culture if you would.  It is amazingly simple in execution and its appeal: subcultures, especially old ones, are often quick to judge, and put exceptionally high barriers of entry towards acceptance.  To be fair, these old cultural warhorses have seen repeated attacks and piracy by the constantly stagnating music industry, and if not for these routine assaults, would probably not be as exclusionary as they are today.  However, be that as it may, some of these protective measures, however superfluous and irrational looking from the outside, have paid off.  If not for the visceral infighting that has paralyzed the goth scene in the past, we would find goth clubs full of freaks in Hot Topic gear dancing to tuned-down, terribly-played commercial rock today.  Other examples for other subcultures exist, and are plentiful.

(In)Security Blanket

However, it is this fear of rejection, or more so perceived fear of rejection, that has helped shape hipster culture to begin with.  Every crowd has its snob, and this dynamic has been molded into a stereotype that directs hipsters away from preexisting subcultures.  Combine this with tell-tale stories from hipsters being snubbed in their youth, and it solidifies it.  I have made several attempts in the past (and will in the future) to promote my night to this crowd, and the most common messages I get back are, “It’s not my thing,” “Goths are too snobby for me,” in addition to all sorts of sundry excuses as to why a bunch of people who love Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Chameleons UK, and The Jesus and Mary Chain would never show up to a night that plays these gratuitously.

The truth is that if you snuck into a club with a fake ID at 16, you probably did something embarrassing before the end of the night - even if it was a “top 40″ club.  However, in the world of socially-awkward arts kids, this experience of rejection is curiously amplified.  Add into the mix the sad reality that we live in a world obsessed with instant gratification, and no effort, perceived or otherwise, becomes worth it to a generation that is used to hundreds of TV channels and parental-approved rebellion just waiting to pander to them.  Hipster scenes are as welcoming as they are superficial; as long as you’re not passionate about music, you can party with them and pretend you’re passionate about music all night.  For the insecure, wanna-be music fan in an ADHD world, this must seem a little bit like heaven; no barriers, no commitment, just a wink and a nod and everyone ignores the irony staring them right in the face.

Ahh… but you ask, so why is this so detrimental to independent music?  Haven’t kids always done things that piss off previous generations?  I’ll get to that, but first a little bit of history:

The Cutting of Ties

In case you haven’t noticed, since their inception in the 70’s, college radio stations have been the last bastion of independent voices.  This has been explicitly by design, and for once we can thank the government for protecting our civil liberties - go ahead and do it, you won’t get too many other opportunities.  In the world of music, this has led to a natural progression.  College stations play independent music, the better of which is picked up by minor, independently-owned radio stations.  Eventually, through charting from the college stations and airplay by the independent stations, the majors pick and choose what independent artists will “break,” and offer them contracts.  Assuming the indy band actually wants to play with the majors, they then sign on board, sell music, tour, and in theory everyone makes money and lives happily ever after.  Of course, the truth is quite different, but this rouse has kept this cycle going for decades.

The first bump in this process was the introduction of SoundScan, and its popularity can be (somewhat infamously) be credited to Nirvana.  SoundScan tracks actual record sales and bills this, of course, as equally important to airplay and college radio charting.  Nirvana was SoundScan’s first major success, and the two were mutual powerhouses in the rise of grunge and genrefication of otherwise loosely-classified independent music.  We are still seeing the effects today; radio-friendly “metal” these days is nothing more than louder, angrier grunge, and everything new that comes out now already has a genre sticking off of it like a price tag.  You might find this hard to believe, but there was a time when this was not the status quo.

The second bump has been the buy-out of independently owned radio stations by media giants like Clear Channel Communications.  Thanks to the loosening of anti-trust laws with the music industry, corporate behemoths have been able to gobble up independent radio stations at an alarming rate.  SoundScan’s persistent dominance in the marketplace, which reduced the value of independent radio, has actually made many of these stations more than happy to be bought.

What this has left us with is college radio isolated and seemingly out of touch with the rest or radio.  With charting left as its only form of leverage, college radio has little to offer the music industry or the independent artists it supports.  While ultimately college radio is still better than nothing, it is not that much better, after being almost completely neutered by this two-prong assault.  This has forever changed the paradigm through which independent music gets out to the people who want it.  Already, independent labels have sensed this and started to slowly back away from college radio stations, and conversely, the major labels have been more than willing to fill the gap.  However, there is still hope for rapid proliferation and distribution of independent music, but it is a vacuum we must fill before the majors take advantage of that, too.

Squandering Our Last Chance

Right now the music war is at critical mass.  Whether you know it or not, the music industry and RIAA are pushing harder on Congress than ever to change the laws solely to their benefit.  With college radio on the disabled list, and independent radio stations largely gobbled up, one of the last bastions of independent media is web radio.  The RIAA has recently pushed through legislation to triple the royalty rates that were already preventing web radio from being a major player in the music industry.  The new rates may destroy the majority of web radio completely.

With these new rates, the obvious solution is no longer a solution at all.  Clearly, if web radio wants to promote independent music, why not just play independent music that the majors have no right to the royalties on?  One of the lesser-known clauses in the new legislation mandates that web radio pay royalties on all music, independent or not, to the RIAA, and then it is the responsibility of the artists to come to the RIAA for their payment.  This supersedes any deal for royalty-free music that web radio stations may have with independent labels.  The new bill is very clear: pay the majors royalties no matter what, and let them sort it out.  Under this burden, most independent outlets with limited budgets will be forced to close, and most independent artists won’t know how to get their royalties to begin with.  Purely speculation?  Ask the guys at WDOA radio what they think of the new rates - they’re already off the air.

This is where hipsters come in.  With their anti-scene culture, the traditional flags to rally around are being removed.  This makes organizing for independent art even harder.  Without genres to advertise with, web radio stations are left without valuable “keywords” and “marketing terms” to attract people to them.  Robbed of the semantics to help find and gain supporters, web radio faces an extreme uphill battle.

Worse still, as hipster culture isolates younger music fans from older ones, music knowledge is not passed down, or ignored.  I won’t get into details of obvious DJ requests I’ve made at hipster nights that have been greeted with blank stares, but I can say from personal experience that hipster culture is deliberately and necessarily a disorganized mass that is swallowing artsy types with the lure of style over substance.  The directionless music culture of the hipster scene explains the bizarre mixes found out their nights.  Why not play pop music back to back with 80’s underground, followed by hip-hop?  With no guiding force and no way reasonable way of acquiring desperately-needed music knowledge, hipsters are left to agree on whatever the DJ plays as the current incarnation of “cool;” doing otherwise requires the ability to take a stand, dissect a genre, and risk rejection - the avoidance of all of these is a hallmark of hipster culture.

It is important to note that hipster culture is highly commercial, and the same people who are selling youth culture to hipsters are the same people who stocked the shelves at Hot Topic, and the same people who used Nirvana to obliterate independent music in the early 90’s.  That is, of course, the major labels and the music industry.  If they can keep us separate and disorganized, then we have no voice and no way to win the fight.

Hipster culture is the majors’ latest assault on our last front, in a war that should be entirely winnable by either side.  With this door closing, we will be left with nothing but the same tired beat that drove the Ramones to put on leather jackets and play the music they wanted for people who wanted it.  Only this time, will there be anyone there to listen?

To find out how you can help, go to:

http://www.savenetradio.org/