i hate the idea of trying to define "selling out". there's even a line between selling a song to be used for a commercial and writing a song SPECIFICALLY for a commercial*. if a band suddenly gets airplay on mtv, so what. i seriouisly doubt that 100% of the time it's because the band got sick of being an indie band. bands can be popular and still care as much about the fans (fuck, we're all supposedly u2 fans here, right??), and still care more about making the music than making money. until i see afi or any other band youy've accused of selling out state that they only went major because they wanted more money. i'm still going to beleive (no matyter how naiive it might be) that the main objective is getting the music out so more people can hear it, because maybe more people will like it. the second they start putting out watered-down versions of their last album, is the second musically that they come close to "selling out", and that's a very difficult thing to define as well. something that someone sees as an artistic expansion could be seen by someone else as an attempt at becoming more marketable.
i'm just as guilty of wanting to see my favourite smaller less popular bands stay smaller for a few reasons, often because i don't want to see a song that i really liked get played to death. maybe if you're a real punk it makes you cooler if you like all sorts of bands that no one else knows, but if so, i'm not that kind of punk. but it does get frustrating when a band tries really hard to stay smaller. it's harder to find their music, it's harder to find fans to talk about it with. but at the same time i did get really worried when i heard "walk away" was the first single from the new dropkick murphys album. it really seemed like they were trying to cater to the mainstream more with that song than with something else off the album. i did change my mind though. but it still drives me crazy when my favourite local band is content to only occasionally play small coffee shops, and will take their time getting the cd to the campus radio station because they don't care about gaining too many fans.
*(credit: edgeman)