Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

Traditional wisdom says that the recorded music industry is dominated by the major labels.

There used to be a bunch of them, but over the last 25 years, their number has been whittled

down to just three companies.

There's Universal, the biggest, Sony, and Warner Music. Here's something you may not know. At last estimate,

about 110,000 songs are uploaded to the streaming music services every day. Of that number,

only about 4% are from those three major labels.

The rest is from indie labels and do-it-yourself musicians.

So let's flip that around.

96% of all new music comes from independent musicians.

The market share for indie labels has been rising by double digits for almost 25 years now.

Indy music, or at least material from artists not directly signed to one of the three majors,

was an important aspect to the music of the 2010s. Major label acts were still important, but

without the indies, it would have been a pretty

empty decade. But thanks to the sheer volume of new music and some crafty distribution by

indie-friendly companies, we got to hear a lot of it. The width and breadth of indie music over those 10

years was staggering, and without the influence of independent musicians and the styles and trends that they brought

along with them, major label mainstream rock would have been much different.

So let's examine that.

This is part two of the history of rock in the 2010s.

This is the ongoing history of new music podcast with Alan Cracks.

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