What does Alternative Mean to You?

Here are some answers taken from various newsgroups on the Internet. Thanks to everyone who participated in answering this question. If you would like to add your comments to this page, send me some E-Mail. I may ask other questions in the future and post them here as well. Thanks again!

Alternative Music = buzz word created by the media to stick a label on
rock bands when they could have just as well called them rock bands - Matt.

Not commercial, not chart popular or anti-money. Pro music for fun. Not
over-produced. - Anonymous.

Alternative means anything that's out of the rules. Which rules?
Show biz ones, of course. Afghan Whigs are alternative cuz they can use
cellos, violins and trumpets combined with distorted guitars. David Sylvian
and Robert Fripp are alternative: I saw them live, and I understood that
they didn't care 'bout the audience, they only cared 'bout what was
happening on stage (that's why they're great!). - Alex

Alternative is dead. To me, most early-mid 90's music other than hip-hop
was "alternative". It's just a label I slap on early 90's guitar bands, the
first rock bands to break out of the 80's. There is no such thing as
alternative anymore. To give you an idea, the early alternative stuff was
like, Pearl Jam, and the ending was somewhere near when Green Day came out.
Of course, nothing underground is "alternative". - Ruey Chin-Wu

Yes, but I see that the power of major record companies is one factor
that drove those artists away from the alternative-genre.
Should I say that alternative is independent?
Now, I don't want 1000 and 1 people flame me and tell me that their
favorite band is still alternative and it's in the charts - please
note that this represents my personal opinions and views. - Juha E.

Ah, but riddle me this, isn't the label 'Alternative' just a term created
by the radio and MTV to describe the music they play and separate it from
the rock of the 80s - Tom Bellin

Yes there actually is alternative music! Check out the independent
labels such as burnt hair, bedazzled, projekt.... These bands play very
original music that I consider 'alternative'...very different than
what is fed to us by radio or MTV. - Anonymous

Okay...it's very hackneyed term which was applied by mainstream music critics
(particularly American ones) to describe any music turned out by under-30s
during the 1990s which was popular primarily among middle-class white kids
living in suburbs who liked to feel sorry for themselves. This term began to
lose applicability around 1995, and although many of the first crop of
alternative bands are still categorized as "alternative". The term is no longer
applicable to them as it's now also applied to pop radio shit (i.e. Marcy
Playground), and also because many of these bands have moved into things other
than power-chord feasts with hastily written down beat lyrics. - Nick Ian K.

Nothing, alternative music does not exist. Some jackasses decided to call
rock, grunge, punk, and metal all alternative - Kevin Xu

To paraphrase Claude Bessy (AKA Kickboy Face): There is no such thing
as alternative. There's grunge, there's synth pop, there's noise,
there's techno (etc), but there's no alternative. Alternative is just
what you say you like at the party so they won't throw you out and you
can't get cocaine anymore. - Nick Nelson

Okay. Well said...it is also a category that record stores like to use to
categorize their inventory...which I find really annoying that they have an
"alternative" section...if people in their "alternative" section are really
alternative, then what would you call the music that is REALLY alternative or
underground? Whacked out? It is just a made up word... that Nick described
perfectly. - KARM.

To me, alternative music is not played on MTV. It's not played on the
radio. There is no huge display as you walk into Tower Records. Your
neighbor likely hasn't heard of the band you speak of. The music
isn't following the "hot trends" (and this seems especially true of US
music, which, in the mainstream, is one giant, evil, twisting mess of
trend.) - Anonymous

Because if a band is really good and it gets more 'popular' maybe by word of
mouth, less commercial radio airplay (you'll have to excuse me I'm in the uk and
I guess things are a little different here) or whatever it ceases to be
alternative.
So therefore alternative can't be a style of music but a measure of success.
I swear I'm not trying to be a bitch, I'm just trying to 'understand'. - Kate