Street credibility
Related: aura - authenticity - as a concept in coolness
Contrast: commercialism and 'selling out'
Credibility
Credibility is the believability of a statement, action, or source, and the ability of the observer to believe the above.
Common terms include cred, street cred, and indie credibility. The last of which is crucial for an independent band to be critically well received.
In music, credibility is an ideological concept and may involve notions of universality, complexity, and originality, and autonomy (Green, 1999). Also involved is authenticity. Financial and artistic autonomy is probably the most vital for indie credibility, the loss of which is called selling out.
In public speaking, Aristotle considered the credibility of the speaker, his character, to be one of the forms of proof. Contemporary social science research has generally found that there are several dimensions of credibility. Berlo and Lemert noted three: competence, trustworthiness and dynamism (Berlo & Lemert, 1961). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credibility [Oct 2005]
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