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Very common. If it's in both ears, waxy dark brown to black discharge and has a kind of funky bitter smell (not like an infection) it's a fungal thing. If it's only one ear it's probably an infection or a foreign object.

Take the pup to the vet for the first round anyhow.

If it's a bad/persistent case, your vet has a lot of options. There are ear washes, ear drops, etc. Here's what we did:

My chocolate Lab had the persistent ear crud, waxy and dark. Fungal. We went at it from both sides of the problem - topical and diet. There's a cluster-bomb type eardrop called Otomax - has an antibiotic, steroids, and an enzyme in it to break up the crud. Do this OUTSIDE the first few times. You put in a few drops and then massage the base of the ear to work it in well. Dog will probably shake and scatter droplets of the stuff all over. Same goes for ear wash. The Otomax bottle says not to use ear wash, if your dog's ears are really FULL of crud you might want to use the wash to clear things out, then switch to Otomax. Do NOT use Qtips. Leave that to the vet. Just use a cotton ball or tissue to wipe the surface of the outer ear. If you simply can't resist, at least keep the Qtip vertical so it doesn't turn the corner to the eardrum, but all you're going to do is jam the stuff down in there and make it harder to get out. Resist temptation.

As for the inside aspect -- most ear issues are related to skin issues, i.e. allergy issues.

We switched the dog first to AvoDerm, a dog food designed for sensitive skin. It has avocado meal and fish oil etc. in it. It worked pretty well, but what really cleared her up was switching to a non-grain food.

There are several good ones - Evo and Blue Buffalo come to mind, but we settled on Taste of the Wild because it is no-grain but has a lower protein content than most no-grain foods, and the Lab is an old dog (11 in March) so we don't want to overload her with protein. TOTW is made by Diamond, which had the Chinese melamine episode, but I figure once burned twice shy and they're going to be VERY careful about their sources from here on out. Diamond other than that one instance has been a pretty good dog food company.

. . . just my two cents. Go with what your vet says - he's seen the dog.