From the title, you’re probably anticipating that this will go one of two ways. Most likely I’m a neckbeard who started his retreat into Yo La Tengo ephemera around the time the Strokes saved, in air quotes, rock and roll. The other option is similar, except that I’m someone a decade later to the game who doesn’t understand why Colin Meloy solo albums don’t get talked about anymore. Either way, I understand your skepticism, but bear with me.

“Indie” is not a term I ever wanted to defend. Like “Alternative” before it, it felt pretty meaningless. Lumping Dinosaur, Jr. in with Dntel, for instance, didn’t make sense when comparing musical sensibility and so it seemed like an outsider’s term. Maybe it’s in light of the inescapable, noxious, meaningless “hipster” label that I’m subconsciously nostalgic to be called an “indie kid” again; at least it felt like an outsider’s term that excluded somebody.

The inconvenient truth though is that despite the tonal differences between Sunny Day Real Estate and American Analog Set, they sure seemed to have a similar fanbase. And this is really all anyone really cares about when it comes to genre, because categorization ultimately comes down to whom you can sell to.

The similar fanbase was no accident. Indie bands trafficked the same routes that hardcore bands carved out in the early 80's. They dropped the aggression in their music (or flipped it, back when twee still felt somewhat confrontational), but they sustained whatever careers they could manage off of zines and VFW halls, just like the punks. Eventually, enough college rockers got jobs and brought with them fond memories of house shows. The indie underground, or at least the most presentable of it, traveled up Troy’s bucket into Nissan commercials (Modest Mouse) and finally onto MTV (also Modest Mouse).

That this happened at the advent of the internet was no accident. I discovered indie admittedly a little late, not through 7” splits but through fin de siecle peer-to-peer networks and a couple good friends. Death Cab and the Shins getting name-dropped on TV shows and movies allowed normals to find these bands via the internet; they didn’t even have to brave the condescension of their local record store. What got cultivated and nurtured through human-to-human networks through much hard work and self-sponsorship enjoyed, with the right exposure, the democratization of taste that the internet had promised.

Except it wasn’t ever actually democratic. A true democratization would occur, maybe, if fans were buying their music. Instead, bands began seeking out a more reliable meal ticket. As Modest Mouse, DCFC, and the Shins learned, licensing can be the secret weapon to achieving solvency. An indie band can expect to license a song for $4,000 to $6,000. To earn that same $6,000, a band would need to sell 1,000 albums on iTunes and possibly more physical copies (after tallying up the manufacturing and distribution costs). Considering that a respectable indie album may only sell around 10,000 albums and that a licensed song may pay off double by leading to more album sales, it’s a tempting proposition. It takes a considerable amount of promotion and touring—both labor-intensive, often frustrating enterprises—to sell albums without radio play. It becomes even more tempting when big money comes calling, as it did to the Black Keys when an English mayonnaise company offered them more money to license a song than both their parents made (they declined).

The hidden cost of file sharing and pittance-paying streaming services is that bands and labels begin to rely on licensing to stay afloat. Indie bands and labels are not the greedy, convertible-driving record company execs of the 80s. Their efforts tend to be labors of love, and money is a means to continuing what they love to do. But even for artists, when licensing is such a big piece of the puzzle, there is a subtle pressure to make their music appeal to advertisers.

There’s nothing wrong with music that has popular appeal. I like a lot of pop music. Paramore is awesome. But it doesn’t sit well with me when a type of music—or more accurately, the hard-won network of fans, labels, and critics historically associated with punk rock and then indie rock—has become a channel for developing TV commercial music. And I won’t deny that a lot of the TV commercial music is good quality music made by people who enjoy making it, but there’s a difference between the music I love and the music that gets shunted around blogs these days.

Commercial music, by its very design, asks nothing of the listener. That’s its beauty. A Rihanna song does all the legwork for you: the hooks are upfront, the mids are scooped out, the vocals have all the burrs sanded off, and the beat is compressed and ready to jump out of your car radio. When it’s over, you don’t have to think about it anymore. My favorite music, the stuff that makes me evangelize to friends, asks something of me. Whether it’s patience for an overly long intro, forgiveness for a sour note in a bridge somewhere, or even confronting my own discomfort with an intimate lyric, my favorite music asks me to actively listen, to put a piece of myself into listening. This is the kind of music that rewards the listener and that builds a community.

I feel it’s an appropriate time to pick on the band whom I feel are the poster children of commercial “indie”: Haim. Steven Hyden at Grantland has already insightfully wrote about Haim, but I want to throw my two cents in. Before Haim there was a trio of photogenic siblings who played their own instruments and made catchy pop-rock. They were called Hanson and no one took them seriously. When critics were tripping over themselves to praise Haim, I felt legitimately disoriented and confused. Surely this is passable pop played by figureheads fronting for a studio concoction? But there didn’t seem to be any nose-holding irony to “indie” outlets’ enjoyment of the pablum.

I suppose I’m being unnecessarily cranky on a couple of points. Haim is fine. I don’t really care what you listen to, so go listen to Haim if you want. It’s not necessarily Haim or their music that I have a problem with, it’s the icky, nominal association with the music that I love. I didn’t really flip my lid on it until I read them described as indie rock. So isn’t part of the problem just the uncomfortable collapse of my own binaries? Maybe so.

But what also bugs me is that the promotion of Haim appeals to the trappings of indie—a DIY, outsider sensibility—when in reality it is as commercial as anything on top 40 radio. But, you might observe, indie rock flipped a more palatable style of music on the foundation of the punk scene. That’s true, and punks have every reason to be salty about it. The difference I see is that emo and indie spawned communities and their music has proved to have longevity. I mean, if we’re going to piss on what came before us, can’t we at least get some better music out of it?

To correct your likely prejudice about me, I don’t think we live in a bad time for music. It’s a fantastic time to be a music fan. There is good music practically anywhere you care to look for it. But what is the cost of having everything for free and of having our indie easy and disposable? If indie music, which traditionally relied on a community of fans and bands, has been co-opted as a marketing platform for commercial pop, whither the channels for actual independent music? Notice how the recent emo revival went largely unnoticed by the standard lineup of blogs, websites, and publicists until it had established itself with a nationwide, even international network of fans and labels. Algernon Cadwallader and Crash of Rhinos had come and gone while Pitchfork was reviewing Justin Timberlake.

Sure, newer bands who choose to carry on the DIY ethic, either through necessity or aesthetic, will ultimately be as resourceful as the Black Flags who came before them, and whatever they hammer out will be just as beautiful. But why make it harder for them? It’s already plenty unfair that bands who want to be heard need to possess an entirely different skill set than just making good music. It’s also not advantageous for fans of challenging, adventurous music that we demand a band or a label either produce something that middle America can stomach for 20 seconds or toil in obscurity for three albums’ worth of tours before being able to make rent. The music business has always been full of pitfalls, and I don’t have an easy solution to the puzzle. But I think a good start toward a braver new world would be to stop pretending that pop music is indie.