CNN is running a special section on indie culture.
Ryan Schreiber, the editor and founder of Pitchfork Media, a popular online magazine that chronicles the indie music scene, said the indie spirit has been commodified and re-envisioned as a marketable lifestyle just like punk, alternative and grunge before it. “But those are all permutations of the same very resilient subculture,” he said.
“If the last 30 years are any indication, after every last cent has been wrung from it, it’ll just burrow back underground and continue on its own terms,” he said. “You can’t kill the ideal.”