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As was mentioned previously, indie music isn't necessarily the same as self-publishing. In the indie music world, you still have a lot of labels that act as filters. And generally when you find a label whose sound you like, you'll tend to go back to them to see what else they have to offer. Not to mention the show promoters who tend to book similar types of acts together. This makes it a lot easier to find bands you'd otherwise never have heard of.
Contrast this to indie publishing, which largely means "self published". All semblance of a filtering system is removed with self publishing, and you end up with a whole lot of dreck floating around out there. Sure you have bands that self-release material, but many of them tend to have songs that wind up on compilations (another filtering system), or they release split singles with other bands they've played with or toured with (7" singles are still very popular in the indie music world). These would be similar to many of the short story compilations that you see. But again, the notion of an editor or a publisher (even if it's a single person) comes back into play to act as a filter.
By and large, the two worlds mirror each other, but because the "reading world" is so much smaller than the "listening world", everything is just on a much smaller scale, IMHO. But you can still find small publishers who do a great job of filtering and helping the authors edit/rework their material.
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