Recently the “indie scene”, otherwise known as independent labels, has been getting more and more attention lately. You can attribute this rise in popularity to avenues for quick publication and instant worldwide availability opening up to the public at a cheap-to-free price range, such as the internet. There was a boom of indie material in 1960's to 1970's as well, back when almost every teenager thought that major corporations were censoring far too much. I am writing this paper to argue for independently released media and the benefits of doing so for all publishers and consumers alike, and would like to start off with a brief history of the censorship and tyranny of major labels.
One instance of censorship among major labels is related to the punk group, the Dead Kennedys. There were quite a few people and even a few labels themselves saying that the Dead Kennedys would be signed if they changed their name, which of course they would not do. Although this was intentional, the Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello biafra is cited as saying “one of the reasons I used that name was to torpedo any fantasies of any other band members of signing to those pimps.”1, it still stands as a good example of what someone was able to do when out on their own. Of course, there is always the age old issue of censorship on words in actual songs, which is abundant in radio and kid-friendly albums, which is the next thing I will be taking a look at.
Wal-mart, a well known and popular market place, has a certain business practice with all of its musical C.D.s that come in stock. That practice is only allowing versions of discs with censored unacceptable words into the store's stock. In a bold move, popular canadian pop-punk group Green Day refused to sell their album 21st century breakdown in the retailer because of the need of a censored version, instead releasing the fully uncensored version at target, where it still peaked on the sales charts.
Comics have an even worse history with the beast of censorship, dating back all the way from the 1950's and not letting up even a little bit since. Comics have long been thought of as material for children among the major corporate minds, and have always been treated as such. The harsh treatment began around the time the CCA (Comics Code Association) was formed, but in truth it was only affecting the major distributors of the industry. Things like fanzines, which were comics made by ordinary people and often distributed freely among friends, remained untouched for the simple reason of them not going into the larger market.
Television has always been a huge target of censorship. Unfortunately, do to the nature of broadcasting itself, it's not often you see an underground or independently produced television show. They normally aren't big enough to sustain themselves with profit from ads and as such, the FCC has an iron grip on what gets to broadcast. One popular way to get around such things is to make a “web show”, where you basically create a show with digital equipment and broadcast it over the internet.
Movies are in a better position, they don't require serialization and don't have to be broadcast to anyone. I would think the most that an independent film producer would have to pay for is the equipment itself, with possibly DVD distribution or any possible merchandise based off of the film being next in line. There are even a few Independent films that have been shown in theaters, and this presents a great hope to me as to where America's future is heading.
The main problem with Producing independently is that it is too expensive for most people to promote their own work, although this has mostly been solved by the many popular hosting sites on the internet which even go so far as to allow you full control of the license your works are under. Another problem is that you often don't get full control of anything, and producing independently solves that period. If you're willing to drop the label, you get full control. No obscenely thick contracts necessary.
