In 1998, online retailer GoodNoise sold the first legal mp3s on the internet. Because the major labels would consider the format tantamount to piracy for the next few years, GoodNoise's catalog was restricted to independent and unsigned artists. And though it would take GoodNoise several years, and a name change to eMusic, to make a sizeable dent in the marketplace, the digitial rubicon had been crossed.

For the most part, the independent music scene embraced internet distribution while the major labels fought it kicking and screaming. That's a primary reason why the former has experienced unprecedented success since, while the latter has struggled to survive. To mark the American Association of Independent Music's Independents Day 08 event—a celebration of everything that the independent community has achieved—CMJ is counting down the ten most important moments in the past ten years of indie music. Sure, no list could possibly hope to capture everything this community has experienced in the past decade, and we'll cop right away to a variety of omissions, such as the rise of weblogs and satellite radio. That said, CMJ is proud to have taken the bumpy ride through the past ten years of independent music along with the legions of artists, labels and fans. It's your day, people. Enjoy it.

1. CD Baby Long Tails It, March, 1998
Back in 1997, the only way you could purchase albums by the independent songwriter Derek Sivers was at his shows or by mailing him a check. He was getting played on regional college radio, but there was no way for people who liked what they heard to quickly pick up a copy of the unsigned Woodstock, New Yorker's album.

"I went searching everywhere online for a place to sell it, and there was just nowhere," said Sivers. "I think eBay might have existed then, but it wasn't really the type of place someone goes to just make a quick transaction. There was no PayPal. Amazon didn't sell CDs [yet]. There was just nothing," he says, noting that that then nascent companies like CDNow only cared about major releases.

Though Sivers' company, CD Baby, now sells albums by hundreds of thousands of independent artists, when it started in late '97 it was less about changing distribution paradigms than just finding a way for the songwriter to make his work available. "It's not like I set out as a businessman to go conquer indie music or some lofty goal like that."

Sivers says that CD Baby was up and running just ten days after he first thought of the idea to create a site on which to sell his CD, and it only cost him a couple hundred dollars in software and web-hosting costs. The earliest CD Baby design only had a handful of entries for Sivers and some of his friends, but it made its first sale the night he launched the site. Sivers ran CD Baby by himself for the first year and didn't move it out of his house until 2000. As the site caught on, he remained dedicated to a core group of principles: no artist would ever be kicked off the site for not selling enough; artists would be paid on time; and there would be no paid placements or favoritism on the site.

As the company grew, its artist-friendly reputation snagged a number of coups, such as live and rarity albums from major label cult acts like eels and Failure. It also released early works that nurtured the career of songwriters Regina Spektor and Jack Johnson. The company eventually partnered with iTunes to provide digital distribution, and Sivers said he teared up when an Apple employee informed him that the CD Baby catalog "was twice as big as any other content provider on Earth." After it began to take off, Sivers retired from playing music to focus on being a "couch" for his site's artists. He likes to joke that he accidentally discovered the now popular "long tail" retail theory—that holds there is more money to be made selling small amounts of many different releases than large amounts of a few—long before the term was coined. "It just feels like now," he says, "the rest of the industry is taking a similar approach to what we've been doing for ten years."

2. Z-Trip And P Make The Internet Uneasy, 1999
DJ P and DJ Z-Trip's Uneasy Listening, Vol. 1 thrillingly smashed together bits and pieces of a whole summer festival's worth of iconic songs by Madonna, Depeche Mode, Del The Funky Homosapien and the Who, to name just a few, into a dance-floor destroying monster a good year or two before the rise of the mash-up. But the Missouri-born DJ P (Danny Phillips) and Phoenix, Arizona, native DJ Z-Trip (Zach Sciacca) did far more than create the perfect party mix with their 1999 release. They also paved the way for Danger Mouse, Girl Talk and other heroes of mash-up DJ culture, kick-started the internet-only mixtape phenomenon and demonstrated just how shockingly fresh Run-D.M.C. and Bruce Hornsby can sound when stacked on top of each other.

"Uneasy Listening was just something me and DJ P did to combat the same old mixtapes that were happening at that time," says Sciacca. "In our eyes a lot of DJ's were playing the same records over and over and not really experimenting enough. The idea of this kind of mixing came from the original DJ's in hip-hop. They used whatever they could find and mixed it all together. I've tried to carry that formula on from the moment I touched a turntable." The DJ's accomplished a lot despite, or perhaps because, Listening was never available in stores. They independently printed up 1,000 copies, which were available only at their gigs. "It was originally meant for us and the people who came out to the shows," Sciarra says.

The album found its way to internet, where it was so widely traded that it earned placement on Rolling Stone and the Village Voice's end-of-the-year best-of lists years after its original creation. Mixtapes were nothing new in the hip-hop community of course, and artists like Negativeland had been creating not-quite-legal musical collages for decades. But these were usually totems only available to hard-core enthusiasts. Because of the ease of internet distribution and its omnivorous aesthetic, Uneasy Listening turned the underground DJs into minor celebrities. Z-Trip and P both landed several high profile festival and club residency gigs. Sciacca cites opening for the Rolling Stones, Rush and AC/DC as a particular highlight, and he also recorded for Hollywood Records.

But beyond boosting the DJ's own profile, Uneasy Listening proved that releases never designed to be sold in official stores (in no small part because of copyright issues) could still flourish online and bring their creators greater recognition, including major label production work for the likes of Diplo and Danger Mouse. The internet-distributed, copyright-defiant mixtape also became a de rigueur promotion tool in the hip-hop community, as best heard on the celebrated mix series Clipse' We Got It 4 Cheap and Lil' Wayne's Da Drought. "I think the days of needing major distribution and major labels to be heard is kind of over. It helps, sure, but the internet is king and DJ's have gone digital," says Sciacca. "There are so many ways to be heard now, it's cut out a lot of the middle area."

3. Aimee Mann Saves Herself From The Majors, May, 2000
The recent albums by Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead might not sound influenced by singer-songwriter Aimee Mann. But when the two veteran alternative rockers walked away from major labels and released their albums independently, they were walking down a path paved by Mann.

Mann first gained recognition for singing with the new wave band 'Til Tuesday, and clashed with label executives when she pushed her group's sound away from synth pop to acoustic rock. The solo album she recorded for Epic, Whatever, was eventually released on Imago after years of delays. The oft-delayed follow-up was released on Geffen in 1995 after Imago folded. It was titled I'm With Stupid. Geffen was then purchased by the Universal Music Group in the late '90s, and after a period of restructuring Mann was moved to the UMG affiliate Interscope. The company felt the album lacked marketable singles (Mann has stated in interviews that she was told that Elvis Costello was not considered a commercial enough guest star), and several attempts at recording new material failed to appease them.

"I think I just gave up the dream," Mann said in a 1999 New York Times feature. "And the dream was not to be rich and famous or sell a lot of records. The dream was that I would work with people and they would be helpful, and if I was having a tough time, they would be understanding and we'd all sort of work together. But that doesn't happen, and I don't believe it ever will."

In 1999 she and her manager bought back the finished album, Bachelor No. 2 Or, The Last Remains of the Dodo, for six figures. Mann and her manager, Michael Hausman, released the record through Mann's newly formed label, SuperEgo. The album was initially available solely through Mann's website and her shows before she found a retail distribution partner, but it took much less time to find their fanbase. Hausman recently told Billboard that the pair had been collecting fans' e-mail addresses "as soon as people started using e-mail," and also offered free promotional downloads before such practice became common. The album would go on to sell 230,000 units, and Mann made far more money than she ever had during her stints on the majors.

Mann benefited from many of her songs appearing on the soundtrack for the 1999 film Magnolia, but she has maintained her popularity through frequent recording and creative touring. Though musicians thriving without help from the majors was far from a novel concept, that Mann saw far more financial success on her own didn't go unnoticed by fellow artists. In the early '90s, it was often considered a career killer to get dropped by a major, but Mann's success helped validate the idea that career artists with a devoted fan base and web presence could get along just fine without one.

4. Wind-Up Records Take Indie Label Success Higher, August, 2000
The roster of Wind-Up Records, which over the years has included Creed, Seether, Finger Eleven and Evanescence, might not be what immediately springs to mind when visualizing the term "indie." But whatever one thinks of those artists, you've got to respect the hustle. In the summer of 2000, Wind-Up dominated sales, radio and video charts with their signature act Creed, whose second album Human Clay would go on to sell close to 20 million albums. That would be an impressive feat for a major label, but for an independent label with a staff of just 35 people at the time, it's historic.

To hear Wind-Up President Ed Vetri tell it, the label achieved rock radio domination by sticking to principals sacrosanct to independent labels: they kept the roster low and gave each artist time to grow. "Major labels, it's more about just throwing 15 to 20 records out and seeing what sticks," Vetri says. "That's their philosophy. Ours is artist development," pointing to the fact that the label supported Finger Eleven even though it took them three albums to find breakthrough sales.

Shortly after starting in 1997, the label found early success with Creed's debut, My Own Prison. Vetri said that while there was initial resistance from some radio stations and television about working with an independent label, "we knew if we had the music heard, listeners would be the ones to demand the songs, and that's what happened." The label's releases are distributed through Sony-BMG, who interestingly also worked with 2000's other chart-dominating indie, Jive, home to N' Sync and Britney Spears. As the years went on, Vetri says the label steeled itself from industry-wide record sale declines by partnering with their artists on publishing, touring and merchandising rights several years before major labels would introduce their oft-discussed, controversial "360 deals."

Vetri says the label has also expanded beyond its hard-rock line-up by signing "indie kind of rock bands" like Stars Of Track And Field and Pilot Speed. But despite changes at the label and in the industry, Vetri said Wind-Up credits the label's continued success to its ability to avoid typical major label bloat. "We're smaller. If [artists] want to come talk to the president they come right into my office," he says. "I think our greatest accomplishment is that we get our music heard. Whether you like it or not, it's out there."

5. Napster Blows Up, Summer, 2000
This decade had already gotten off to a rough start for Mike Doughty, and that was before he had even heard of Napster. In what he terms an "utterly stupid move," the songwriter had quit his group, the popular rock/hip-hop combo Soul Coughing, and he and the band were subsequently dropped by Warner Bros.

And then Doughty heard about Napster, the software program that had been famously designed by Northeastern University student Shawn Fanning to streamline peer-to-peer music sharing. He was "terrified, like anybody with a fair amount of sense who makes records would be." Doughty fully supported the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Metallica against Napster's creators and users.

But a funny thing happened when Doughty headed out on his first solo tour that summer. While playing a dining club in Princeton, he was startled to see that a fan had printed out and posted a request for a song from his solo album Skittish. As the tour progressed, he was shocked to find more and more fans of his previous group requesting and singing along to songs from Skittish, which Doughty had recorded between Soul Coughing releases in 1996. The album had sat in Doughty's drawer ever since Warner Bros. declined to release it. Doughty suspects that Skittish was leaked to the internet by Kramer, the record's producer, who was angry that Warner never paid him for his work. Though Doughty was mad that many of the Skittish songs circulating on Napster were of alternate, unapproved mixes—and to this day has mixed feelings about file-sharing services—he credits Napster with supplying the word-of-mouth that allowed him to tour as an unsigned act and sell copies of his album.

"Literally at the end of the shows I sat down at the front of the stage and sold [copies of Skittish] by hand. Glory-wise, it went very low... but I made a lot more money than I ever did in Soul Coughing," he says. Doughty continued to tour on Skittish as an independent artist for years until signing with ATO in 2004. He is quick to point out that he had already had a cult audience when Napster popularized file-sharing services, and is not sure if file-sharing's word of mouth benefits outweigh the loss of income from lessened record sales. But he will admit to being one of the first living proofs of the advantages of file-sharing. "Good for music, not good for music, I don't know," he says. "But I have to give it credit. It practically saved my career."

6. Wilco Works The World Wide Web, September, 2001
Wilco's legendary struggle with its former label, Reprise, over the release of the critically acclaimed album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is the perfect metaphor for art versus commerce and this decade's primary example of major label incompetence. But it was also a crash course in how bands would learn to see the internet as a promotional tool rather than a sales-gobbling bogeyman. When executives at Reprise refused to release Yankee and eventually allowed the group to leave the label (taking their album with them), Wilco did something almost unheard of for a band of their stature: they leaked their own album. The group posted Yankee in its entirety on Wilcoworld.net. To the group's surprise, they quickly saw audience members singing along to their "unreleased" songs.

"We went out on tour and our music was being downloaded and heard through our website," Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy told CMJ in 2002, "and we were like 'Well, this is why we exist. We don't exist to make records. And we don't play music to sell records.' And it was really satisfying." When Yankee was eventually released in the spring of 2002 (by Nonesuch, ironically part of the same extended Warner Bros. family as Reprise), it was not only critically acclaimed, but was Wilco's highest-charting album. It also established a blueprint that would become gospel to touring, "non-commercial" acts over the years: use the web to spread the word and the music, then hit the road and let the executives worry about sales.

7. Seth Cohen Hips Thousands To Death Cab For Cutie, December, 2003
During the first season of The O.C., the show's dorky heartthrob Seth Cohen gave his friends and family the "Seth Cohen Starter Pack" containing his favorite albums. He also gave an on-air shout out to the Shins, Death Cab For Cutie and Bright Eyes. The series would go on to give significant soundtrack time to those groups, as well as independent artists like Pinback, Spoon and the Walkmen. The use of then-lesser-known artists for the phenomenally popular teen soap opera was often considered one of the early indicators that independent music was going to infiltrate mainstream culture in ways unthinkable even a decade ago.

But to Alex Patsavas, the show's music supervisor, it was just business as usual. She had booked Jane's Addiction and They Might Be Giants at her university's club in the late '80s. In the mid-'90s, she coordinated music for B-movie king Roger Corman, and slipped tunes by groups such as the Melvins and Fu Manchu into films like Caged Heat 3000. She eventually moved onto more mainstream projects like the WB's Roswell, where she would occasionally get soundtrack slots for acts like Ivy. But even though major-label alternative artists like Juliana Hatfield and the Flaming Lips had appeared on television shows like My So-Called Life and Beverly Hills, 90210, television was still considered an uncool move for a lot of groups, "and it was just a much harder job to convince bands and artists that it would not be a bad thing to be connected to picture," Patsavas. But she stayed persistent.

Patsavas says that the series' creator, Josh Schwartz, "always intended that music be a character." And as a side bonus, not only could independent music provide the show with a unique identity, it was a lot cheaper as well. "My philosophy has always been that we should honor the good stuff," says Patsavas. "It's much easier to license great music rather than music that I consider mediocre."

As the show grew in popularity, Death Cab For Cutie, Bright Eyes and the like saw significant boosts in their sales and profile. Patsavas said that not only did she find that artists and labels were eager to work with her, marketing departments were now pitching her, perhaps realizing that television networks were much more open-minded when it came to new music than most commercial radio stations. The indie-heavy vibe that Patsavas helped pioneer still thrives. One of her current series, Grey's Anatomy, helped break singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson. But no other current television series has gone as gonzo for independent music as Showtime's drug-dealing drama Weeds, which music supervisor Chris Noxon says grows out of a combination of enthusiasm and budget.

"We have a fraction of the amount of money that other shows do which is why we have stuck to the kind of music that we have," Noxon says. "We simply can't afford anything that anyone's ever heard before. I think that actually helped the show." Weeds has featured music from Ween, Sufjan Stevens and even an entire episode based around Man Man. It has also had its former title sequence song, Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes," covered by a variety of artists including the Shins, Ozomatli and Michael Franti. And though in the beginning of Weeds' existence he still had to hustle to get artists to pay attention to his show before they would lend their music, he says that Patsavas had made his job much easier. "Her operation really helped people understand that music could play a star role in the identity of the show," says Noxon, "and the way that they feature bands at the end with a tag and card, fans of the show started waiting to hear what song they were going to use. I think that's a huge advance in terms of making music a really important part, and I give all credit to her."

8. Apple Turns The Laptop Into A Recording Studio, January, 2004
By definition, independent music exists apart from major labels. But plenty of its artists have found that working with other tools of big business, from corporate advertising dollars to big-money social networking sites can help keep the gears rolling. And one of the biggest boons to independent artists in the past few years came from one of the biggest corporations in the world.

On January 2004, Apple Computers launched the GarageBand software application, which essentially turns an artist's laptop into a home recording studio. Though plenty of programs, such as Pro Tools and Apple's own Logic Studio were available to help pros record music on computers, GarageBand was the first software designed with the amateur musician in mind.

"Recording in the past has been very difficult, it's been very expensive," says Xander Soren, Director of Marketing for Apple's Music Creation Applications. "You had to have either a whole studio or a really expensive software and hardware system. What if we could just put that on the Mac for everybody and make it super easy but sound really good?" Soren says that the GarageBand software "was built right on top" of Apple's previous Pro Logic programming, with an easy to use, intuitive interface. It has been updated several times since its launch and now comes standard with every Apple computer sold.

"If you don't know what you're doing, we've essentially built in the expertise of a recording engineer into the application, so you don't have to know what settings you need to pick for a female vocal," says Soren. "You just pick female vocal, and we've hired the people that know all the compressor settings and EQs and things you need to do to make that vocal sound great."

In addition to some of the program's loops appearing on Usher's recent single "Love In This Club," it's a testament to GarageBand's high standards that even noted audiophiles like Steely Dan's Donald Fagan and Trent Reznor have embraced the program. But just as importantly, unsigned or independent artists such as Hot Chip, Subtle, Ingrid Michaelson, Meg And Dia, Cassette and Scout Niblett have used GarageBand to record albums and demos. Thanks to Apple, computers have not just made music easier to publicize and obtain, they've also made it easier to make, for better or worse.

9. eMusic Relaunches, September, 2004
When the online digital music service eMusic relaunched in September, 2004, it had already gone through several owners, retail approaches and even names, but remained dedicated to independent music. When the company first launched, "the only labels willing to sell music in mp3 [form] were the indie labels," says David Pakman, eMusic's president and chief operating officer. "They had the foresight to go head-first and were rewarded by that. In the physical world, the indies have about 28 percent market share. In the digital world, they have more than 40 percent." By comparison major labels didn't license their catalogs to "anyone of significance until 2003," says Pakman, "which is four years into the Napster phenomenon."

Having previously worked at the digital music locker service Myplay and Apple Computer's Music Group, Pakman was determined to develop a viable business approach for eMusic when the company Dimensional Associates, Inc. purchased it in 2003. In September, 2004, eMusic re-launched on a subscription-based model that let consumers purchase copious amounts of mp3s for a flat monthly rate. Because the company doesn't employ the digital rights management coding that iTunes and other online retailers use to regulate the distribution and use of their mp3s, the major labels were uninterested in working with eMusic. They weren't greatly missed.

In the past few years eMusic has made deals with powerhouse independent labels such as Matador and Merge, and now works with more than 33,000 different independent labels. It's grown its catalog to more than 3.5 million songs, and has sold 200 million downloads since the re-launch. It also hosts recommendation columns and takes an active role in introducing its users to rising talent.

"The people at eMusic were one of the first people to champion Beirut," says Ben Goldberg of Ba Da Bing! Records. "What's so great about them is that they'll listen to the upcoming releases and decide who they want to feature based purely on if they like the music. They heard [Beirut's debut, Gulag Orkestar], loved it and told me they were making a banner to put on the front page which said, 'Like Arcade Fire? Like Tom Waits? Meet Your New Favorite Band: Beirut.'"

eMusic is now second only to iTunes in digital sales. But just as importantly, it's created a middle ground for consumers that love the opportunity the internet affords in helping to discover new music, but still cling to pre-digital notions like wanting artists to get paid for their work.

10. The Shins Top The Charts, January, 2007
When Portland indie poppers the Shins released their third album, Wincing The Night Away, no one was more surprised than Sub Pop owner Jonathan Poneman that it debuted on No. 2 on the Billboard Charts and that the group was invited to play Saturday Night Live.

"When [now retired co-founder Bruce Pavitt] and I started the label [in 1986], the idea that we could ever even crack the Billboard Top 200 seemed like a fantasy at best," admits Poneman. "And obviously record sales have plunged, and that may be part of the reason why we're able to get on as high as we do. But you know the top of the charts is still the top of the charts, and the fact of the matter is the Shins sold nearly 120,000 records that first week. If you go back to the very beginning of the company, that's more in one week than we sold in entire years."

The Shins chart victory wasn't just a sign that independent music was now capable of heavy sales, but also solid proof that Poneman had finally righted the Sub Pop ship. This summer, the label will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a SP 20 bash in Seattle that will feature performers from throughout the label's rich history. It will be a celebration of not only what the company has accomplished, but what they've survived.

By the time the company hit the 10-year mark, Pavitt had amicably left to start a family, and Poneman said Sub Pop was struggling to compete "with larger labels who had basically moved into our neighborhood, artistically speaking." It wasn't easy. The company had swelled to 60 employees, and Poneman was funding the label out of his own pocket. "Oh, I ended up lending the company, like, lots and lots of money personally, just to keep it afloat," he says. "For any company to survive, it needs to make more than it spends, and for years it was the other way around. We were a bloated parody of a record label, really."

According to Poneman, things finally started to turn around for the label when they signed the the Shins. "That was a cornerstone for being able to rebuild the label," he says. The label would go on to shrink its employee base back to 25, and balanced its budgets to a reasonable level. More success came with the electro-pop outfit the Postal Service and Florida folkie Iron And Wine. Poneman credits everything from the rise of downloading and music blogs to the continuing support of indie radio and retail—as well as the inclusion of many of his groups on the soundtrack to the 2004 film Garden State—for helping his company get back on its feet.

But to hear Poneman tell it, the reason Sub Pop achieved success comparable to a major label was that they quit acting like one. "During our, how should I poetically put it, fucked up years, we started taking cues and finding clues in places that were inappropriate," he says. "We needed to just be ourselves, really."

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