The day Steve Jobs dissed me hard
"Maybe you can't appreciate this now, but the summer of 2003 was the biggest turning point that independent music has ever had."This has always struck me as interesting point from a music fan's perspective.  It seems like the confluence of a lot of factor's led to expansion of independent music around this time.2001, 2002 was around when cable and DSL prices started to drop outside of major cities.  The opening of Itunes. And seemingly a lot of big time independent artists began to jump to major labels (or made major releases from smaller labels) and released very successful albums.  Death Cab for Cutie, The Shines, and Modest Mouse off the top of my head.Just an interesting phenomena I've always been curious about.  This article was eye opening as to what one of the key forces in this move might have been.