2008 Woodie Awards
By Dan Deluca - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Issue date: 3/20/08 Section: Music
|
But at least it knows where the music is: Right here in the capital of the Lone Star State, where last week's 23d annual South by Southwest Music Festival was the biggest ever, with more than 1,700 bands playing to 12,500 attendees at more than 70 venues from Wednesday to Saturday night.
And that's only counting official showcases, where acts like Philadelphia's carnival shamans Man Man and Brazilian rockers Telerama and New York indie-Afro-poppers Vampire Weekend, and Mexican noise-punk band Los Llamarada and Chicago rappers Cool Kids played clubs packed with bloggers and booking agents, giddy indie music fans, and even a few specimens of that endangered species: the major-label record executive.
Amidst the action, music bizzers convened over beer and barbecue to try to figure out how, in the phrase of former Pink Floyd and current Billy Bragg manager Peter Jenner, to "monetize the chaos."
It used to be that the major labels - now down to four - were major players at SXSW. Now there are only about 50 A&R (artist & repertoire) execs left in the business, down from 500 in the late `90s. And the power has shifted to movie, television and video-game music supervisors, who might catch a cool band at SXSW and give them the exposure they came here for.
The festival mirrors the changes the Web has wrought. There's too much music for even the most energetic fan, and bands are playing for exposure rather than money. As sales of recorded music have dried up, the importance of live performance has grown - and SXSW is where you come to show you have what it takes.
In a Saturday morning show at the Continental Club, Austin singer Jon Dee Graham said he understood the importance of SXSW. "That's why I'm playing 17 shows this week and only getting paid for one," he said, tongue only partly in cheek. "But I've got a box of CDs up here, and if you put some money in the box, I'll give you one. That's still what this business comes down to."
That's what the industry hopes. If they can just figure out how to use the Internet to put some money in that box ...
_R.E.M. at SXSW. Wednesday night's outdoor show at Stubb's barbecue joint by the trio of Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bass player Mike Mills - augmented by Scott McCaughey and drummer Bill Rieflin - was a textbook example of how older, revered, maverick artists use the media confab to jump-start their careers.
Be the first to comment on this story