'Sell out with me, oh yeah...': White Lies and Weezer attempt to answer the question of how to make music pay

The music industry is in trouble. A bold statement? Not really. It seems to be the stock phrase with artists, labels, music journalists and media analysts everywhere these days.

People are not paying for music to the same degree as they used to, and are accessing their music in other ways, mainly for free, and mainly illegally. Industry experts are looking for the answer, but at the moment, have had very little success. Despite this having been a hot topic for a while now, it has been driven home to me over the past week, with the coming together of a couple entrepreneurial  experiments that I felt failed terribly.

LOST? I am, especially when mapping the workings of Rivers Cuomo's mind.

Firstly, I popped to a show last week with my good friend James (or The Popscener as he is known to the blogosphere).

The gig featured Curtis-worshippers White Lies, Manc art-rock stalwarts Everything Everything and ex-Razorlight sticks man Andy Burrows' latest venture I Am Arrows, and took place in Shoreditch Town Hall, at the centre of London's most notorious hipster neighbourhood. So, you would forgive me for thinking it was going to be the quintessential 'indie' experience.

However, on arrival, we were greeted with two queues; one for guest list/media members, and one for competition winners. Although there did appear to be some sort of direction for paying ticket-holders, or dare I say it 'fans', they seemed to have been shoved out of the way as an afterthought.

It turned out that this show was one of two Spotify Now Playing nights, in which the online streaming giants team up with the flavour of that particular week in order to promote their new affiliation with mobile network 3 (the other show, in Manchester later this month, features Tinchy Stryder, I Blame Coco and Kid Adrift).

Once inside, plastic-smiled, logo-emblazened t-shirt wearing Spotify and 3 representatives lined the foyer of the venue showing no particular purpose, while the edge of the main room itself contained various 'listening stalls' where the audience could check out the new Spotify app on particular 3 mobile devices (presumably chained to the wall to stop pesky music-lovers stealing the handsets, or music, or both). Listening to recorded music via headphones at a live music event? Surely the only reasonable excuse for such behaviour is at a Silent Disco?

Openers I Am Arrows played a passably pleasant set, but ruined everything before their last number when Burrows gave a rather contrived shout out to both Spotify and 3 by saying what a great job they were doing.

As for the audience, we watched all three sets from the exclusive heights of the media and guest list balcony, where you could pretty much smell the elitism overpowering that of the free drinks, and it was a sorry sight. Firstly, the room below was half full, and those who were in attendance looked as though this possibly wasn't their first choice of places to be on a chilly October Thursday. Even for headliners White Lies, who were admittedly rather boring to watch, the crowd seemed completely static, with barely a bobbing head or tapping toe to be seen. Were these people fans at all? Or were they merely there, like myself, because it was a freebie and they had nothing better to do?

While this may not immediately appear to be a direct result of the uber-commercial nature of such gigs, I feel it does show a flaw in the corporate approach to selling records and gig tickets. Firstly, if a higher priority is given to corporate partners, advertisers, PRs and journalists, then of course fans are going to become alienated and disengaged. And secondly, people go to see a show for the music and the atmosphere, and not to have brands shoved down their throats. Music fans aren't stupid, and dare I say it,  a few may even maintain a morsel of integrity, and therefore will soon see through gimmicky endorsement deals and marketing.

This takes me to the case of Weezer. I'm sure you're all familiar with the controversy surrounding the band's latest release, Hurley (half of me questions whether I am required to put a wee 'TM' after this). If not, then a brief summary is that, at first, eccentric frontman Rivers Cuomo insisted the name was an arbitrary decision after choosing the cover art to feature the face of Lost's Jorge Garcia, whose character shares his namesake with the album, before guitarist Brian Bell let it slip that it was all to do with the financial aid for the album supplied by surf clothing company of the very same name. This was then retracted by Bell in a statement that uncannily echoed Cuomo's initial statement (more can be read about this here). After all of this to-ing and fro-ing I was then not overly surprised, but rather quite disappointed, to see a full page advert on the back of this month's Alternative Press magazine devoted to an endorsement deal 'exclusive' to Pacsun between the retailer, Weezer and, you guessed it, Hurley clothing.

Add to this the recent release of rapper B.O.B.'s 'Magic', featuring the cookie Cuomo (terrible, or excellent? You decide, see the vid here), and the original use of Garcia's face on the album's cover, we're seeing a last-ditch attempt at integration by the band that I think falls flat on its arse.

Weezer are a band I have watched go seriously downhill in the last five years, and now I feel they've hit rock bottom. Granted, they probably don't need too much money these days, but their attempts to make up record sale losses with these hair-brained schemes (I suppose we wouldn't expect anything less from Cuomo) illustrates the music industry entering very dodgy waters.

Both Weezer and the aforementioned British bands would once have been loosely tagged under the 'indie' umbrella, a label that has been banded around so much that its original meaning seems to have been lost.

'Indie' is short for 'independent', and these two examples show that bands today are far from it, increasingly relying on corporate sponsorship, and veering away from integrity in order to be heard.