Believe it or not but this decade is about to end sooner than you think. Well, it’s actually one more year before we draw the curtain over this odd period between 2010 and 2019 which we somehow still haven’t probably named yet. Is it The Tens? The Tennies? It’s up to future generations to decide that. What we do know is that these past almost ten years have given us tremendous records, great music and also stunning memories. And as we already did specific indie music playlists for the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s we thought it would just be fair to also present you with the best sounds from this field.
We don’t know about you but in many ways this past decade feels like a transitional one for this society on so many levels; like a final farewell to the 21st century clashing with a certain helplessness regarding what follows it. Significant changes are necessary on pretty much every level of our life whether it’s economics, democracy, environment, work, society and media consumption. The world changed drastically in these past ten years and somehow many people find it quite strange to adapt, often resulting in such questionable reactions like the Trump and Brexit voting decisions. And in many ways the musical landscape channels this changing world.
By the end of this decade it feels as if the lines of what defines ‘independent’ music have almost completetly vanished and genre limitations appear to be a thing of the past. It already started in the past decade but now the possibilities and adventurous notion of many artists opened up the once so limited field to new territories than juts guitar music. These diverse tastes are sensible all over this 200 song long playlist which also includes electronic sounds, R&B, rap, psychedelia and songs that seem to live in multiple genres simultaneously.
Everything appears to be ‘indie’ and everything appears to be ‘pop’ in some form, making us really questioning whether this categorization will make sense anymore ten years from now.
Because apart from the actual sound the way we consume music has also changed and compiling a Spotify playlist for an entire decade like we did here surely wasn’t an option back in 2009. These past ten years saw the final death of physical media as a mainstream way of consuming music, it questioned the existence of the album, changed the way artists recorded and released music. It liberated and democraitzed the industry to a certain degree. It’s still a long way to go but this is a good starting point. So, of course, it as impossible to cover the entire independent music landscape here but it hopefully gives an overview about it and fill your hearts with great memories and emotions. Because despite all changes music is still capable of doing that. Thank god!