Why Is Obscurity So Coveted by Underground Music Fans?
One night whilst indulging in a pre-bed doom scroll, phone inches from my face, a post claiming to list the ‘underground artists who went mainstream in 2025’ was enough ragebait to make me go trawling the gutters of Reddit for second opinions. Feeling dejected that the extent of my knowledge of underground artists was limited to those labeled ‘mainstream’ by some anonymous keyboard warrior, I had a few questions: who cares whether someone is ‘underground’ or ‘mainstream’? Who cares how many listeners an artists has? Who cares to gatekeep music? Unsurprisingly, surfing reddit, I found the person who cares.
I found this Redditor, with cortisol levels in the stratosphere, yelling into the fakemink subreddit that ‘FAKEMINK IS NOT UNDERGROUND’. Their argument revolved around three main ideas:
1. An artist who has a certain level of listenership can no longer be classed as underground. — ‘IF YOU HAVE A WIKIPEDIA PAGE YOU ARE NOT UNDERGROUND.’
2. Underground music is not simply the antithesis of mainstream music. — ‘IT’S TIME TO STOP CALLING THESE ARTISTS UNDERGROUND JUST BECAUSE THEY CAME UP THROUGH THE SOUNDCLOUD UNDERGROUND’.
3. And by continuing to label ‘graduated’ artists as ‘mainstream’ you are drawing attention and resources away from under-appreciated artists. — ‘IF PEOPLE REALLY CARED ABOUT UNDERGROUND MUSIC THEY WOULD LISTEN TO PEOPLE WITH 500 FOLLOWERS ON SOUNDCLOUD.’
Whilst I still can’t understand whether this piece of media was a brilliant piece of ragebait, satire, or genuine opinion, I think it raises some very poignant questions. Namely, why is obscurity so coveted by underground music fans? Through talking with friends, scrolling social media, and diving down internet rabbit holes I have concluded that obscurity plays a major role in identity formation for fans who want to feel part of something personal, communal, and sometimes cutting-edge.
Underground music has been around for a hot minute, but only recently has it been so obscurity oriented. Much of this has to do with how underground music culture has been adapted to the online space. Pre-social media, underground music was obscure, but that was not its defining feature. During the ‘60s, ‘underground’ was a term used to describe the magazines of the UK’s counterculture movement. Emphasis was on its anti-establishment views and its distinction from the mainstream. In the ‘70s, ‘underground’ became affiliated with the DIY punk scene and its ethos of self-production, local shows, and independent record labels. It wasn’t until social media algorithms started launching underground artists into virality that obscurity became such a prominent feature of underground music. There are dozens of examples of this, but perhaps the most prominent is EsDeeKid, who catapulted from tens of thousands of listeners to tens of millions and his album Rebel reaching the UK Top 10s seemingly overnight. His top song, 4 Raws boasts 83,000 Instagram reels made featuring its blown out 808s and nefarious lyrics. Virality like this leaves fans in a tricky place. Long-term fans are swept away in a stampede of popularity, their only salvation being “I knew them before they were famous”. In this way, obscurity is an important identity marker for fans. It implies a personal relationship with the music, not one built around clout chasing something popular. Taken to the extreme this logic implies a sense of insiders versus outsiders, “authentic” fans versus “posers”, often decided by litmus tests to the tune of “name 3 songs” or “you don’t know [artist]”!?
However, behind these pretentious cliches is an earnest desire to resist culture being appropriated into an aesthetic and being subsumed into the commercial mainstream. We have seen this happen time and time again, for better or for worse. The political and anti-commercial messages of punk, pioneered by bands like Sex Pistols, became well and truly commercial by the time 2000s pop-punk rolled around with bands like Green Day and Linkin Park aiming to sell teenagers rebellion printed on Hot Topic t-shirts. Obscurity, therefore, is coveted because it is seen as a shield against this onslaught. It preserves a sense of authenticity. As a consumer we allow this authenticity to imbue our identity. However, just as the myth of the noble savage romanticises “primitive” peoples as living “purer”, more “natural” lives, the idea of the “obscure artist” who creates truly “authentic” music is also entirely a myth. Artists do not create in a vacuum. No matter how experimental their work may be, they too are still shaped by aesthetics, trends, and our broader society.
For many underground communities obscurity is an inherent part of their identity. In London, for example, marginalisation and a lack of commercial spaces have pushed queer DJs into squats or illegal warehouse raves. Often these events are only accessible via word-of-mouth invites or tightly networked online communities. Not just to keep cops out, but also to preserve spaces dedicated to queer experiences. However, social media has made the very exclusivity that protects these spaces desirable. The insider status that comes with these tight-knit communities has made them coveted spaces for those wanting to perform taste and authenticity. In this way, social media encourages “obscure” scenes like this to be coveted because they act as some beacon of cultural capital for others to ogle in awe at.
So, who does care about obscurity? Well, the Redditor screaming from the rooftops certainly does. But they are far from alone. Social media has morphed obscurity into a whole new beast. It is no longer just a byproduct of marginal scenes, DIY ethics, and limited reach, but a resource to be sought, curated, and displayed. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with the joy of discovering new music, or the intimacy of feeling connected to an artist that feels entirely your own. But when that discovery becomes something to be performed it begins to lose that intimacy. What begins as a genuine desire to protect culture from commodification, or to belong to something personal and communal, is quickly folded back into the same systems it resists. Obscurity becomes aestheticised. The distinction between an “authentic fan” and a “poser” becomes less about genuine connection to music, and more bout how convincingly one can perform it.
Written by Laurie Alderson
Opinion
