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By CHERYL SANTA MARIA
Staff Writer

We may be in the throes of an unprecedented recession - with more and more Canadians losing their jobs each month - but the indie music scene appears to be alive and well.

In some aspects, anyway.

Michael Nadal, saxophone player and composer for the Toronto Jazz band, No Stone, says he hasn't seen a significant drop in show attendance this year.

"The majority of people who follow [indie music] are students and twenty somethings who I don't [think] are seeing [an] immediate impact [from] this recession...as long as indie bands keep things sounding fresh, the support will always be there ... there will always be [a] need for [an] alternative of what's on the radio."

It's been well-documented that people will continue to spend money on entertainment during hard times (a recent news clip by Reuters proclaims that ticket sales for summer concerts have been strong [1]), but that doesn't mean the industry isn't changing.

The live music scene may be holding steady but illegal downloading and file sharing have been eroding record sales for some time: A report released by The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) back in January concludes that 95% of music downloads continue to be illegal [2], indicating a significant shift in the way people are discovering and consuming music, regardless of the economic situation.

This shift is, in fact, so pronounced that it has affected some of the industry's biggest players. While some artists have tried to resist these changes (think Metallica v. Napster, 2000), others have embraced them. Radiohead, for example, capitalized off of the downloading trend by offering up In Rainbows as a "pay what you wish" digital file before the LP hit stores in 2007. Other household names, like Nine Inch Nails and Lily Allen, have employed similar tactics.

Blair Purda from Endearing Records, an indie label based in Vancouver, BC, has been watching record sales drop since 2001.

"The recording industry has been depressed for some time with sales shrinking for most new artists over what they would have been a decade ago, [and] the [current] recession doesn't seem to have either slowed or accelerated this trend," he says. Laura Morrison from the BC indie label Dog My Cat Records would agree. "It's hard to know if it's the recession [that's] affecting CD sales, as the music industry was in free fall before the economy started crapping out," she says.

Blair describes the current indie music scene as "shrinking and crowded", but notes that more established indie acts are able to maintain a certain level of record sales and continually fill out a live venue, regardless of the times. Unknowns, however, may find themselves having to work a littler harder. Laura thinks the recession has "affected indie acts slightly" because "venues are more reluctant to bring in acts and are slower to book."

While the music industry, or rather, the business of making and selling records, carries on through tough economic times, it isn't as prosperous as it once was. In order for record labels to survive throughout the recession and beyond, they will have to find new ways to market and distribute products. This means finding a way around illegal downloading, which appears to be here to stay, at least for the time being.

While most things bounce back after a recession, the future of the music industry is hard to predict. While governing bodies scratch their heads over how to regulate music distribution online, the industry has been left to fend for itself.

Only time will tell, but here's hoping that musicians will continue to make, and profit from, their music.

Works Cited.

[1]http://in.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=106168&videoChannel=104

[2] Digital Music Report 2009: IFPI. http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2009.pdf