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Mission accomplished” - it’s a banner a fatuous politician hangs on an aircraft carrier, not a claim small arts groups often get to make. But if it were raised at this week’s festival marking the end of a decade for the Wavelength music series, it would be utterly justified: Here’s a group that set out to fundamentally change Toronto’s music scene and did exactly that.

So when Wavelength-as-Toronto-knows-it comes to an end with its 500th show this weekend, it won’t be imploding in acrimony or petering out in exhaustion like many arts projects, but simply graduating out of a first incarnation that surpassed its wildest dreams.

Roll tape back 10 years and the high-profile bands were lumbering, major-label “alternative” groups with embarrassing names (stand up, I Mother Earth) or, at best, above-average roots-rock bands (à la Blue Rodeo). Other talents played to small handfuls of supporters. Now, the city regularly produces innovative, imaginative music, often released by small co-operative labels - names such as Broken Social Scene, Owen Pallett (a.k.a. Final Fantasy), Feist, Peaches, the Hidden Cameras, the Constantines, Do Make Say Think and many more.

Wavelength is the most commonly cited factor that doesn’t begin with “inter” and end with “net.” All these artists have performed in its weekly Sunday-night events and/or its yearly festival, happily joining in a model conceived by fellow musicians frustrated with Toronto’s cultural inferiority complex and local artists’ presumed second-class status.

“It wasn’t just another indie-rock night. It wasn’t a showcase for new bands trying to ‘make it,’ trying to ‘generate buzz.’ We were so sick of that cheap commodification of indie music,” says Jonny Dovercourt (a.k.a. Jonathan Bunce), a co-founder of the series and its most consistent guiding light.

Wavelength not only exposed audiences to more than 1,000 local acts, but introduced artists from widely varied musical niches to one another.

“I’m proudest of the fact that it created a music community,” Dovercourt says. Through the do-it-yourself message delivered every Sunday, as well as Wavelength’s zine and website, a set of “isolated cliques” gradually became a network. Improvisers met rockers who met rappers who met electronic noise makers.

As that network grew, it generated other series, websites, record labels, poster-art collectives and more, and connected with the visual art and independent film and theatre scenes - a swirl of activity people half-jokingly called Torontopia.

“Another wave of younger people came along who got the mission we were going for and really went for it too,” Dovercourt recalls.

“That resulted in Wavelength getting noticed by more institutional things” – such as Coach House Books’ series of anthologies about Toronto politics and culture - “and that helped us not to feel self-conscious about taking ourselves seriously … And that gave us the confidence to go ahead and incorporate, start applying for arts grants - and create this plan for the future that’s allowing us to evolve at this point.”

With its sustaining role now shared by the other promoters and series it inspired, Wavelength has, in a sense, become a solution without a problem. So it announced a year ago that the Sunday ritual would end this week as its organizers refocus.

They’ll now program monthly events that will emphasize more cross-cultural contact (following Wavelength’s outreach in recent years to Toronto’s Ethiopian-music community, among others) and collaborations with other arts sectors (first up, in April, the Images film and video festival).

“We may be stepping away from the role of giving bands a ‘showcase’ - that may be where we disappoint a lot of people, for those bands who’ve looked at Wavelength as a career stepping stone,” says Dovercourt, who is also the artistic director of the experimental-music venue the Music Gallery.

“Our role is I think to encourage indie bands to view it as an artistic practice and break the music-industry, rock-world paradigm of ‘you get together, you write some songs, you practise, you play a show, you build a following, you make a press kit, you get an agent and then you …’ Suddenly the whole discourse becomes around, ‘How popular are you?’ And that’s just really not what it’s supposed to be about.”

If he has any regret about Wavelength’s first 10 years, he says, it’s that successful musicians didn’t start their own DIY revolution, eschewing the music-biz game entirely. Until then - with more than 20 bands at various venues until Sunday, including several veterans of the scene reuniting just for this occasion - there’s a well-earned celebration to be had.

For a full festival schedule, visit wavelengthtoronto.com.