Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Before the age of the Internet and the iPod, way back in the early 90’s, Nirvana ruled the charts and grunge was the hot new sound. Tower Records was still around, the term “alternative” meant something, and MTV actually showed videos. In terms of Nirvana, what had been crucial their success was their gritty history: scruffy small-town kids clad in thrift-store flannel who’d recorded their debut record for $600 bucks and then released it on the independent label Sub Pop (that not many people had heard of until then).

Kids found the fact that Nirvana was so rough around the edges intoxicating; their lack of polish and pretension ignited the fervor of a generation the same way that punk had done a dozen years earlier. Of course, the only thing the record companies cared about was finding more Nirvanas and racking up more sales, so they did everything they could to find similar bands. Sometimes, it was successful (Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains), and sometimes it wasn’t (Seaweed, Tad). But once the grunge barrel was finally empty, and all the indie bands had been signed (at the height of this madness Japanoise band The Boredoms were signed to Warners Bros, something no one could believe), the major labels started creating their own indie bands, which gave rise to something that later became known as “Scam indie.”

Scam indie was the act of trying to make a major label artist seem like an independent one, which would help in generating a loyal grassroots audience, as well as lend an air of authenticity. The only problem with the scenario was that it was fake. But the major labels “neverminded” this, and kept trying to secretly funnel bands through the indie scene as if it were a kind baseball “farm system,” with the indie scene as the minor leagues while the big labels were the majors. Usually this meant something fairly benign like making a record cover look like it had been cheaply constructed with tape or Wite-Out, meaning the artists had made it themselves. The point would be that the band didn’t care about aesthetics or playing the record industry game (early Pavement and Sebadoh records were the touchstones here); they were anti-image, anti-corporations, anti-everything. But in reality, the artwork was designed by slick art departments who were trying very hard to have the sleeves appear homemade. (In fact, you still see this, even in publishing.) Another facet of scam indie involved huge conglomerates starting boutique record labels, and then trying to hide the fact that the money came not from weekends working at Kinko’s, but from shareholders in giant parent companies.

More than a decade later, with the Internet now a huge presence in almost everyone’s life, “scam indie” is back. Because now, in the age of user-generated content where anyone can produce a video or song and upload it to Myspace or YouTube, it’s even easier to pretend you’re something you’re not. The Wall Street Journal reported on this a few weeks ago with a story by Ethan Smith and Peter Lattman entitled “Download This: YouTube Phenom Has a Big Secret.” The story was about Marié Digby, a supposedly unknown 24-year old singer songwriter who had been turned into an Internet phenomenon due to her homemade YouTube videos and songs she posted on her Myspace page. On the surface it sounds like a great example of Web 2.0 “anyone can do this” egalitarianism, but it’s not.

Digby has a record deal with Disney-owned major label Hollywood Records, and had been signed to them since well before she starting posting her “Shucks, I’m just a girl in her living room” videos to YouTube. As Smith and Lattman write in their article, “Though all involved say that Hollywood Records’ role in her online rise has been limited, label executives say they did nothing to discourage Ms. Digby from conveying the impression that she had stumbled into the spotlight.” Not only that, but “Hollywood Records helped devise her Internet strategy, consulted with her on the type of songs she chose to post, and distributed a high-quality studio recording of [Rihanna’s] ‘Umbrella’ to iTunes and radio stations.” So while her fans “seem pleased to believe that they discovered an underground sensation,” what they’ve really discovered — whether they realize it or not — is scam indie 2.0.

And so while bona fide Internet sensations (of the Jonathan Coulton variety, and not the Star Wars Kid variety) will continue to exist and thrive, thereby creating huge online constituencies and hopefully full-fledged careers (Ronald Jenkees anyone?), these will be increasingly harder to spot due to the fact that so many people out there are faking it. And the reasons they’re faking it are simple: 1. It’s effective. 2. It’s cheap.

The grand prize in the online world is viral word of mouth and virtual buzz, and this has become the holy grail to major corporations. And these corporations, as witnessed from the Marié Digby situation, will do anything they can to create Internet stars that will ultimately lead to record sales. All of which, in my mind, harkens back to the cover of the Nirvana CD that started all of this in the first place: the naked baby swimming after the dollar bill dangling on the hook. A lot has changed in the music industry since then, but the hook and the money are still disturbingly the same.