Recently, Spotify have placed both Sam Fender, an artist signed to Polydor, and Djo, an artist who released his second album under AWAL (Artists Without a Label) on the same Indie playlist. Rising from humble Northeast beginnings, Sam Fender dominates the UK music scene, selling out stadiums, topping charts, and winning BRIT awards, proving he's no independent artist. Despite this, his music frequently falls under the indie rock subgenre. Djo is an unsigned artist, only working with AWAL for distribution. This could explain why Spotify placed them together – because the indie genre has multiple contexts.
We could think of indie as a Venn diagram encompassing independence and indie rock. Some artists are one or the other, both, or neither. The Sherlocks, an entirely independent band from Sheffield, are both. Inhaler are indie rock but are signed to Polydor, so not independent. The conversation gets more convoluted when considering artists like Wunderhorse who are signed to an independent record label.
In the broadest sense, indie and indie rock aren’t the same thing. Indie often describes artists independent from record labels or tied to non-conglomerate labels. Equally, there are plenty artists who are indie rock but not independent. The definition of indie will seemingly be a never-ending debate in music regardless!