The panel discussion was defiantly titled “Flying The Indie Flag” and the mood was clearly intended to be triumphant. “Indie labels are having a banner year,” crowed the panel’s organizers at last week’s South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, and are “being successful by doing it their way, in a world where major labels no longer control the music business landscape.” Yet the faces on the actual indie label panelists looked anything but victorious.

Sub Pop Records co-founder Jonathan Poneman—still earning sizable royalties for his initial signing of Nirvana over two decades ago—scowled his way through a series of accolades delivered for him. And Mac McCaughan, frontman [...]

Mac McCaughan was in the middle of singing a song at a record store while his wife was struggling to keep their 3-year-old son from tumbling headfirst out of her grasp. This took place yesterday, a little after 1 p.m., during an acoustic set-the sort of thing reliably advertised as "intimate"-which McCaughan was playing with two of his Superchunk bandmates, over at New York's Other Music. (The band's bassist, Laura Ballance, appeared to only have electric gear on this trip, and so was watching this performance from the back wall.) McCaughan's wife and their two children (ages 3 and 7) had been either standing, hoisted or seated on the [...]