non-matte

Almost every musician interviewed for this article laid out a similar scenario: that the business surrounding independent rock music—PR firms, booking agents, licensing, even for bands who couldn’t fill the Black Cat, much less the 9:30 Club—feels a lot like the corporate model they once rejected. “I tend to think that when I got into punk rock, part of what was so attractive was that it rejected the machinery of the major labels, which did not support new ideas,” says Dischord Records co-founder Ian MacKaye. “It did not support anything that was off their radar… what strikes me is that of all the stuff the indie music scene would want to inherit, it wouldn’t be that structure itself—those sort of territorial business practices.