What does Indie Music Center offer?
We focus all our efforts, daily, to bring you the best of independent music, whether it's indie-folk, indie-pop, or indie-rock music. We believe that a good song is a song made to stay. Stay in your mind. These are called emotional songs, which cause something unique in you, a chemical reaction: goosebumps. So we're here to give you your daily dose of goosebumps. These goosebumps could then become memories, and memories are an important part of our lives as we get old.
We mostly write and talk about emotional indie music, so will find loads of reviews about fresh releases and regular podcasts, featuring interviews and new music for you to discover. As we cannot review all the songs we discover every week, our Spotify playlist may be a good start!
Why does Indie Music Center exist?
You probably didn't know those times, but even 20 years ago, if you were looking for good music, what were you doing? You would go to your favorite CD store and approach a salesperson for advice, based on your tastes. This person could have told you "If you like Alanis Morissette, maybe you'll like Avril Lavigne". Then you bought the Avril Lavigne CD and you were happy with it. You then come back regularly to get advice from this seller, because he is an expert in his field and excellent at finding what makes you happy.
Today, most of these stores have closed, with the arrival of mp3, then with the sale of CDs online by Amazon and other platforms, and of course: the fatal blow dealt by streaming. Yes, it is still possible to get recommendations. They will be automated. On Amazon, you can read "people who bought this CD also bought this one". On Spotify, you have playlists based on your tastes that are generated automatically by an algorithm. And in a recent conference (March 2023), Spotify clearly announced that they will now give priority to algorithmic playlists, and without saying it, that third-party playlists (like ours) will just slowly become invisible. Cool! They also said that artists could get more placements in that kind of algorithmic playlist if they accept a cut in their streaming income. Fantastic! But where is the advice dimension? Where is human contact? This is why we're not big fans of Spotify and we're actually thinking of giving it up. You can also sign a petition to support artists here.
But you got the concept. Music bloggers are there to fill this lack of humanity. To remain accessible, and to offer you content that will touch you, suggested by passionate human beings and not by machines or other algorithms. And this human contact is invaluable. You can always reach out to us through the comments on the site, or through Instagram. You can create an account for free, and comment on our articles. There is no counter of likes either on our articles or on your comments. No competition. No feeling that others are better than you. No algorithm. Just human beings interacting with each other. We're always happy to chat with our fans! At Indie Music Center, we decided to focus on emotional music. Music that speaks to your heart directly.
Did you know that, in 2023, more than 100 000 new tracks are uploaded to Spotify and all music platforms... every single day?
Apple Music is really proud of that growth and they even say "Every day, over 20,000 singer-songwriters are delivering new songs to Apple Music — songs that make our catalog even better than it was the day before". Really? Are all these songs really worth it?
We totally understand if you feel a bit lazy to go through all these playlists to find new musicians to support, it can be a hard job.
Emotional music tends to disappear from radio stations. Short radio versions. Danceable tracks. The same tracks 18 times a day. That's it. Are you able to remember the last time you had goosebumps while discovering a new song on the radio? If the answer doesn't come instantly, you got it.
Emotional music is not going viral on TikTok. People are used to scrolling social media and consuming content really quickly. Videos going viral are under 15 seconds. While the time spent on digital content has increased dramatically, the time spent on single content has drastically decreased. And it became almost impossible for an underrated musician to capture attention on a magnificent song that lasts between 3 and 5 minutes. Is it doable in 15 seconds?
So where are those thrills you've been looking for? Is it really easy to find them among those 100 000 new tracks every day?
No worries about that anymore, we're here to make it easier for you. We realized that lots of underrated and independent musicians have this to offer you, thanks to their authenticity.
The goosebumps you're looking for are here, at Indie Music Center (IMC to make it short). Let indie music be the center of your world!
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Meet the founder
Hi everyone, people are used to calling me Niko. I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of IMC. I'm often cruising from shore to shore, working on one of the last 8 transporter bridges in the world. Yes, I am passionate about history, but also... music. I've been working around music for 21 years. I've been a radio presenter. I've recorded more than 300 songs that are still hidden in a hard disk drive (because my passion is to share the music of others rather than my own).
I first started promoting indie music to FM radio listeners in 2001, when I was... 14! At that time, I was only doing this to help some of my favorite local bands. My interviews were full of jokes and funny games, because as I was different, I always wanted to make things differently, probably to catch people's attention and show what I was able to do. Then created my own online radio station (called "Pop'N'rocK Radio") in 2005 when I was a student. And I realized the power of the internet. The radio quickly crossed the borders and made these musicians reach another audience outside of their own country. While I kept on being active on several FM radio stations across my country, even big ones, my online radio station became a whole platform, and I started writing reviews about the songs I was used to playing on the radio. I had to pause the project for a year in 2016 when my GF got cancer. My fights are always like this: 100% or nothing.
A real and growing community
When we knew she was out of danger, I came back to the project in 2017. And I needed something more than just writing reviews. I really wanted to help people to find peaceful and beautiful music, and also help musicians to connect with each other. I wanted my readers to be able to reach out to the musicians they love easily. So it became much more than a blog, I wanted it to be a community. I wanted indie music to be the center of their lives. I wanted the platform to be a kind of center where you can find everything about indie music at the same place. That's how I came up with the name "Indie Music Center". Musicians submitted 10K+ songs to IMC and it quickly became difficult to manage alone. So at the beginning of 2021, Luna Keller, a wonderful singer-songwriter from Germany joined us and brought a younger and fresher point of view to IMC. We started hosting her podcast "Why Doesn't Everyone Know These Songs" on the platform, while it's still played on several radio stations, including ours. We were then joined by Joe Pope in June 2021, another amazing artist from Atlanta, who loves talking and writing about music and musicians, who enlarged this wonderful team. Then Anna Naumenko, a wonderful young singer-songwriter from Germany joined us in 2022.
In April 2021, we celebrated 1000 reviews with a special week of celebration, including special interviews with some of our IMC Family members.
Today
Now we have loads of returning readers every month, from 142 countries, to read our reviews written with our hearts, and listen to our podcasts. Every month of this year, in 2023, we got +30% of readers. Our community is small but it's also one of the most engaged and we're proud of them. They support our artists: they buy their merch, they stream their music, they give them tips on Twitch or PayPal, and they support them on Patreon and Bandcamp. Our community is now our artists' community. Building honest relationships was our goal and we made it! And we're really proud of everyone: our wonderful fans and our wonderful artists.
Tomorrow
We'd love to get more writers on board. So if you feel like you'd like to write for us, feel free to reach out via Instagram. And if you're a musician, you're also very welcome, as we have a column called "Artist Pick: artists writing about artists". Also, we're working on a bigger project and we'll tell you about it very soon.
I'm a musician and would love to submit my music to IMC!
We're really glad to hear that! Feel free to do so via Submithub. If you see us as "inactive" sometimes, it's only because IMC is a side project, a passion. And even if we're in love with it, we can't work on it 24/7 ;)
