The State Of SXSW Music 2015
My annual ‘State Of SXSW’ post —
in 12 not-so-easy steps
1. The SXSW Reset
Fewer huge stars. Fewer parties. An irrelevant keynote speaker. And a whole lot of industry folks saying, “I’ll sit this one out.” This is likely the story of SXSW 2015. And if SXSW was even moderately good at public relations or concerned with messaging, they’d be spinning it like this: “This will be a smaller, manageable SXSW because it needed to be smaller and more manageable.” SXSW is an overgrown tree we can’t afford to—and wouldn’t want to—see cut down. But this is the year SXSW gets a long overdue pruning.
2. Big Talent Opts Out
This will undoubtedly go down as the SXSW with the fewest “headliners” in recent SXSW history. For better or worse, there’s but a small handful of acts this year that could play a main stage of Coachella, Lollapalooza or even Fun, Fun Fun after 3pm.* Imagine any other year where acts the caliber of Alabama Shakes, Death Cab For Cutie, Modest Mouse, Mumford & Sons or My Morning Jacket all have recent/forthcoming albums to promote and instead opt out altogether. Imagine a year where the two most talked-about new multi-format artists on radio—Hozier and George Ezra—also opt out. Instead, this is the SXSW where the return of Incubus warrants an official SXSW news release. Without a guarantee from a major sponsor, every major touring act has to ask what we’ll call The Ex-Cops Question: is the “exposure” is worth it? And this year, the sponsors made it easy. Either they refused to pay or the big name refused to play: Samsung went from Jay-Z and Kanye to Common and Hot Chip. You do the math.
Kanye is, love em’ or hate em’, a bona fide superstar. Kanye at Stubb’s—should it happen—is an “event,” but not half the event it would have been if Kanye didn’t come virtually every year. (Exception: Prince, who was here in 2013, would still be an “event,” because he’s Prince)
3. Your Wristband Has Value Again
Look at the lineup and count the number of showcases stacked with recognizable talent you’d anticipate badgeholders might camp out and stay all night for. Very few. And not even most nights at Stubb’s, AMH or ACL Live. This year, your wristband may be as powerful as a badge.
4. Artist Discovery
If you’re the type who’s bellyached for years that SXSW should be about artists discovery, if you’re the type that scoffs at major-label talent playing the festival because they take the place of an unsigned band, this is your year. The downside? Big talent brings their teams with them—booking agents, managers, label brass, indie publicists, product managers, etc. Those acts stay home, many of those folks stay home because there’s nobody to bill the Four Seasons rooms back to. If they stay home, who are the “industry” the young discoverable bands are playing for at what’s by SXSW’s own admission is designed to be an “industry” gathering?
5. SXSW Trickle Down Economics
SXSW pumps $300+ million into the Austin economy. People argue passionately about SXSW—and genuinely fear for its future—because they care about SXSW, because Austin needs SXSW. There’s nothing yet to say fewer people will necessarily be in the clubs (and with fewer parties there should actually be more people in the clubs), but I’ve already heard from club owners that fear SXSW shrinkage puts their SXSW bump at risk. SXSW is the bona fide tide that lifts the boats for year-round music clubs. Fewer folks through the door, fewer drinks sold. Also, it seems sponsors have ponied up for fewer day parties—which mean high rental fees and big bar tabs. I’ve heard of downtown live music venues with daytime availability still on their calendar, a phenomena unthinkable as recently as last year. A mediocre SXSW for the clubs means a bad August stings that much harder.
6. Why Are So Many SXSW Venues Not Year-Round Music Venues?
SXSW uses non-music venues because they still insist on booking 2,000 official acts. And why do they book 2,000 acts? Because if they don’t lock up those rooms that aren’t live music venues—dance clubs, shot bars, restaurants, hotels, etc on Sixth, Red River, Eastside—SXSW is afraid someone else will use those room for non-SXSW showcases.
7. So What?
2,000 acts does this:
• It dilutes the overall quality of SXSW. Are there really 2,000 bands worth your attention?
• It widens the fray—standing out of a pack of 2,000 is 2x as tough as standing out of a pack of 1,000.
• It means a band can fly from Scandinavia (or drive in from Buda), only to play a room with poor sound, shaky can’t-keep-your-drums-upright stages, and non-existent sightlines. The #1 complaint I hear from SXSW showcasing acts is about poor sound, lack of sound checks, and overall less-than-desirable conditions at clubs that only present music during SXSW.
• And this year, it means spreading out the few high-profile acts SXSW has to make it worthwhile for these non-music venues to participate—taking crowds and dollars away from the clubs who fight the good fight to present live music year round, not just these 4 days.
8. The Other SXSW
Conservatively, recent SXSWs feature 500+ events outside the official nighttime showcases, most with open-to-all RSVPs and free booze. That there’s too many parties, too little city/state control over them, is at this point, conventional wisdom. And SXSW has a long, controversial history of trying to curtail the spread of non-official SXSW events—most famously by providing lists to the city to shut down private events they’re not affiliated with, and long before the Red River tragedy used “safety” as a crux of their argument that unofficial SXSW events must be curtailed/stopped. (Note: often, conveniently, their targets are events sponsored by companies in the same product categories as their official sponsors.)
Right after SXSW 2011, City of Austin Music Programs Manager, Don Pitts told KUT, “We need to curtail it, and I think dial it back some.” (I’ve also heard him describe SXSW as “10 gallons of shit in a 5 gallon bucket.”) Pitts has been vocal that SXSW must be pruned to survive. But it’s a tightrope walk. As I wrote last year, “curtail the parties, free shows, and unofficial showcases and the value of the SXSW experience—the atmosphere around the event, even for as overgrown as it’s become—and you risk losing SXSW Inc. altogether.”
The city is clearly on the right page trying to control some of the sprawl of official and unofficial events. The idea that SXSW has to get smaller before it can grow, or, more likely, before it implodes, is obvious and essential. And indeed, Pitt’s office has been proactive this year—curtailing the number of permits the city would offer and being transparent about the deadlines. Also, whether an event was officially SXSW sanctioned or not took a backseat to whether it was being held in a viable and safe space capable of handling the kind of crowds they’d be drawing (i.e. you can’t get approval to put Kanye in a parking lot on E. 5th). The city even was transparent enough to share the entire list of permit applications—addresses and all. It’s my hope party pruning is enough and noticeable (and indeed, the # of parties seems to be reduced at least 30% or so).
9. McDonald’s. Ugh.
We all had a laugh at the Fry-Fi truck. Then shit got real. Here’s the good news: for all the talk of SXSW getting back to music discovery, in walks McDonald’s, and rather than book Taylor Swift or the first major pop star willing to look past the fact that this is an unpopular brand that reflects poorly on their brands, they booked a lineup of emerging artists. For this, we should applaud them. But… not paying them is obviously a mistake. Saying “we’re just following protocol” is also a mistake. And as many have pointed out, the Ex Cops fiasco was an opportunity to rise above—to say protocol and the status quo aren’t enough. Ex Cops teed it up for McDonald’s to be the good guy. Hinsdight is 20/20, but what they should have done, clearly, was created an appropriately low-key package of SXSW initiatives, been happy with their logos plastered all over SXSW’s sponsor banners, and factored in that damn near everyone they’d be marketing to is already has a concrete impression of their brand. Already it’s clear graduate marketing classes will be making this a case study in what not to do.
Who else should have known that SXSW and McDonald’s were bound to be an awkward marriage? SXSW Inc. SXSW needs sponsors and there’s zero wrong with that. Zero. Corporate sponsors make SXSW (and every other festival, from Coachella to ACL) possible/profitable—without them, tickets would cost considerably more than they do and many simply wouldn’t happen at all. But when year after year the knock on your festival is that it seems catered more to brands than bands, when folks start to complain choir-like that the corporate encroach feels sleazy and exploitative, that’s the time to reevaluate who you partner with. And coming off the Doritos debacle of 2014, you align yourself with McDonald’s?
This year’s sponsor roll includes beer, cars, cell carriers, insurance, banks and energy drinks (none of whom have been individually signaled out for McDonald’s-style disdain). But the sponsorship suits at SXSW had to know that McDonald’s would come to symbolize what people perceive to be wrong about the festival. The backlash to McDonald’s, before even the first Fry-fi truck hits the streets, is what happens when you make decisions based more on bank routing numbers than your head or your heart. (Last year, SXSW took sponsorship money from Penzoil, despite also hosting SXSW Eco.) Sometimes the best money is the money you leave on the table.
10: A Smaller, Manageable SXSW Might Not Just Save SXSW, But Save Us From SXSW
If this isn’t a dramatically and noticeably smaller SXSW, it’s all but certain SXSW is going to make a larger run at city officials to implement the recommendations of Populous—an international design and planning firm, with clients like the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and the Olympics. Last year, they issued a report (that SXSW commissioned and paid for) that recommended creating a “Legal Injunctive Zone,” or a “Clean Zone.” This is a perimeter around some part of the city that Populous says “Protects the brand equity of SXSW and its sponsors but would be made to work with existing businesses and their interests so as to uphold sponsor values and private property rights—in return this may involve a financial exchange linked to the permit process that provides the City with additional funding for security and safety personnel.” In effect, SXSW would buy the rights to control city permitting and super-serve their sponsors. The report says, “The current policy of the City with respect to the permitting process as ‘first come, first served’ and/or ‘must treat everyone equally’ appears to have become detrimental to event planning process and management of the key stakeholder interests.”
Even in a missive this long, we don’t have space/time to explore the ramifications of a clean zone or its legality. But… if this SXSW appears more manageable, if Pitts’ decrease in the number of approved events puts any kind of dent in the party circuit, then SXSW loses some of the teeth behind its quest for a clean zone. This is the best example of how a shrunken SXSW could be good for everyone: SXSW feels more manageable/less scary, SXSW Inc. loses some of its ammunition for political/rhetorical fear-mongering/rights-grabbing, and SXSW goes on for years and years as a big- but less frightening, less likely to implode enterprise—trickling down substantial cash for everyone.
11. Spring Break
Unfortunately, even if SXSW 2015 is smaller, the spring break component might not allow it to feel smaller and more manageable. Sixth Street is a cesspool of sketchy shot bars, public intoxication and the threat of random violence year-round. It’s 5x worse during SXSW. And it’s a virtually unavoidable thoroughfare during SXSW. If you’re here for SXSW, but not spring break, you can’t possibly feel good about Sixth. But the worst part is this: none of the kids here for spring break have a snowball’s chance of seeing much of anything, but they’re going to want to be here next year again because this is where Kanye, Jay-Z etc have been. The headliner-level talent still coming to SXSW are exactly the kind of pop-oriented mass-appeal acts that fuel spring break revelry. Beefed up TABC control, more police, etc are reportedly on the way this year. Hopefully that’s true. Because so much of what makes SXSW feel dangerous and toxic is about Sixth Street and spring break, not about the music festival than runs through it. I suspect not even McDonald’s would dare put a Fry-Fi truck on Sixth during SXSW Music.
12: Conclusion
2015 will be a transitional year for SXSW. And, again, SXSW needed some kind of transition. Show me somebody who didn’t think 2014 was miserable. Make no mistake, there are two SXSWs: SXSW the corporation vs. SXSW the huge event that for better or worse includes/envelopes all of the parties, free shows, and unofficial showcases. I get that it must be frustrating for SXSW Inc. to take the blame for both SXSWs. I get that it makes them defensive and ornery. What we need is both SXSWs to play well together.
The good news for SXSW Inc. is that sponsors who’ve concluded marketing to fewer, better people more directly is more effective than mass marketing aren’t going away or changing their strategy anytime soon (unless, of course, the influencers they’re targeting stop coming). The bad news for SXSW is that a lot of those sponsors will look for ways to go rogue. They always have. But what SXSW (and thus Austin) needs right now has nothing to do with sponsors. What SXSW needs is a series of SXSWs where the takeaway has nothing to do with sponsors or big name talent and is more in line with what put SXSW on the map: “I saw great bands in a great city and even got some business done.”
Here’s hoping SXSW is that kind of return to form. Fingers crossed.
If you enjoyed reading this, please login and click “Recommend” below.
This will help to share the story with others.
Top Photo: Ed Schipul’s “sxsw sixth street 2014" via Flickr and Creative Commons
Follow Andy Langer on Twitter @Andylanger
Follow Cuepoint: Twitter | Facebook
