Good question.

While it's definitely my belief that a typical major record contract involves either expectations or at least implications of what kind of music/sound a band is expected to make and conform to (or else they wouldn't be able to market it and profit - which is the whole idea of signing a band in the first place), it's hard to tell just what is expected of an "indie band" if they're suddenly snapped up to the majors.

On the one hand, the major labels could only have a vested interest in the band if they think it is sufficiently popular to be of profit to them. I guess that could well imply that they are meant to continue doing what they have been doing previously? Interesting thought... On the other hand, maybe the idea behind signing such bands as TV On The Radio and the White Stripes etc is to reach the wider hipster community and profit in that way. With the stronger marketing credentials of the majors, they have the potential to push such bands much further than they could get on small labels, even without the bands having to sacrifice any personal creative control.

This may be slightly off topic but a friend of mine told me that Kurt Kobain had called MTV numerous times leaving them angry messages about them not playing his music videos as much as they should in the hopes of him selling out. I'm not sure if this is true or not but I believed this because this kid is (shall I say) Krazy about Kurt Kobain (I was also think about saying Koo-Koo for Kurt but that seemed to cheesy). I knew that he had a weird ambition to be a sell-out artist but does this make sense it all?