Matthew Wettergreen dot com» South by Southwest

Bandcamp: SXSW AUTOPSY

matthew — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:30:03 +0000

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the bands who attended and the creative professionals who volunteered at Bandcamp: SXSW PREP. Because of this event bands were prepared to promote themselves and be discovered when they attended SXSW a couple of weeks ago. Special thanks to the bands who made the drive up to Austin a couple days early and played the Houston @ SXSW party (sponsored by Kirtsy, Schipul, Werkadoo and AYN Brand). We heard from national members of the tech and music community for the remainder of the week about the party and how positive a party of this sort was for the success of Houston’s music, film and technology communities.

SXSW is now over for this year, all that’s left is that hope that you learned something and came back with new ideas and contacts. We recognize that the summation of each individual experience totals to a wealth of knowledge for the community. In an attempt to share that knowledge and capitalize upon that creative energy, this Bandcamp: SXSW AUTOPSY will be a discussion of the results of SXSW. We’re interested to hear your activities, the successes, failures, new ideas, people to look out for, tips and any tricks to share with your community. The result of this Bandcamp should be a document of new ideas and new concepts for everyone to ponder, execute or employ to maximize your exposure over the course of this year.

Even if your band didn’t hit SXSW, attend this Bandcamp to learn some new ideas that would work anywhere, not just at SXSW. If you’re not in a band but you like Houston community, attend this Bandcamp to hear about the successes from your local musicians. The best part about this Bandcamp is that it will be run by YOU as Matthew Wettergreen will be speaking at a conference the exact time as Bandcamp except in Chicago. Grace Rodriguez of AYN Brand and Ned Dodington of Caroline Collective will be on hand to facilitate but the knowledge and sharing should come from YOU the bands.

Did you know that Bandcamp has now been running for 6 months? We think this meeting would be a good time to let us know what is and is not working for you or what you’d like to see from Bandcamp in the future. If you’d like to let us know privately: mwettergreen@gmail.com.

WHAT: Bandcamp: SXSW AUTOPSY

WHEN: April 5th, 2009 1-3pm

WHERE: Caroline Collective, 4820 Caroline Houston TX

Please note that the originally scheduled Bandcamp: COPYRIGHT will be rescheduled for May 3rd so that Joe Stallone of Bracewell and Giuliani and Grounded in Music may teach the session.

About Bandcamp

Regular BandCamp sessions are held on the First Sunday of every month at Caroline Collective sometime in between the hours of 1pm and 5pm. Please mark your calendar accordingly for future events where the community education model teaches specific skills to musical artists such as, online/offline promotion, tour booking, financials, and recording. Please speak about this event to your colleagues, band members and other interested members of the Houston Music Community.

SXSW is Where You’ll Find Me Now

matthew — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:04:23 +0000

Hurry. up. As soon as this is finished and some clothes and the laptop are thrown into a bag, we head to Austin. For the next nine days, SXSW is where you’ll find me.

Houston’s Focus on Regionalism
I strongly believe that regionalism is a viable path to greater success for groups and communities. This is reflected in the wealth of Houston-specific programs occurring over the course of the Festival:

Houston Film Commission is cohosting a Film Texas Happy Hour Saturday March 14th at Iron Cactus (6th Street@Trinity) from 4P-6P. Registration is closed but show up and see what’s what
Kirtsy and Alltop’s Girl/Guy Party hosted by Alltop & Kirtsy at Allen’s Boots from 5P – 9P. Look out for girls handing out red bandannas, those are the VIP badges
Houston @ SXSW, on March 17 at GRUV (101 W 5th St) to showcase, support and promote Houston and its vibrant Film, Interactive, and Music communities, and make sure Houston innovators and talent aren’t overlooked by the numerous influencers and tastemakers at SXSW. See films curated by Michelle Mower of SWAMP, meet tech companies curated by Marc Nathan of Houston Technology Center and see Houston musicians curated by myself. This party is completely free, please register at the Amiando page here. This party is graciously sponsored by Kirtsy, Schipul, Werkadoo and AYN Brand.
IndieHouston.org Day party on March 20th featuring free beer and 17 or so Houston bands. Event information is here, remember to register at http://colab.org. Caroline Collective is a cosponsor of this event.

Coworking and Whuffie
Last year at SXSW I had the opportunity to learn from some of the leaders in the field of coworking. Those interactions framed my year and contributed to my individual and our collective success. This year I’m looking to share what Ned and I have learned and in turn inspire others to successfully open their own coworking spaces. Join us tonight at the Coworking Meetup at Hotel San Jose (1316 S. Congress) from 7:30P til whenever.

One of my coworking mentors, Alex Hillman, of Indy Hall will be leading a core conversation on Saturday at 11:30AM entitled “Working Alone Sucks: Join the Coworking Revolution.”

Start off your Sunday by catching Tara Hunt‘s Keynote “Making Whuffie: Raising Social Capital in Online Communities” at 11:30AM.

Later on Sunday at 3:30pm join us for the panel “Regional Whuffie Building: Attracting Innovation to Your City” where Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City), Geoff DiMasi (P’unk Avenue, Independents Hall), Susan Evans (Office Nomads), Julie Duryea (Souk) and I will be talking about creating a spirit of entrepreneurship and inspiring a regional sense of innovation.

Music Related
As the week shifts from Interactive to Music, there are several events we’re participating in related to the Music portion of SXSW:

Grace Rodriguez and myself are speaking on a panel at The Band Bootcamp on Wednesday, March 18th on “Why Your Fans Are Your Tickets To Success.” We’ll be talking about how to crowd-source management of your career employing fans as evangelists, booking agents, promoters, designers, microlenders and sources of inspiration.
Saturday, March 21st, several Houston artists will be participating in guerrilla shows somewhere in downtown Austin. No details yet, you’ll have to pay attention to the twitters and the txts.

Coverage
Over the course of SXSW I’ll be blogging for Chicago Public Radio/WBEZ. Read the daily updates on WBEZ’s blog here and follow the coverage at the WBEZ Live twitter account @WBEZLive.

SXSW 2009: by the Numbers, Part 1

matthew — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 07:37:42 +0000

A widely held view by those in the mainstream and college music Industry is that SXSW is one of if not the most important yearly event for breaking new bands. A list of the bands on national PR and press radar is generated around the yearly event held in March in Austin, TX. Parties celebrating music and product run all day and night all over Austin and the hunt for these tickets or list spots begins mid February. For those with a casual interest in music though, SXSW is simply the best place to see bands from all over the nation and world. Whatever your interest, SXSW is a BIG thing. Over the course of four graphs, we will break down the the geographical and categorical makeup of SXSW to f ind out where the bands come from and what type of music you can find at SXSW. If you’d like to check out how this information was compiled, the explicit Methodology is included at the bottom of the post. In a nutshell though, SXSW publishes all their showcase information on their website.

Musicians come from all over the world to attend SXSW but most are from our home continent of North America. Looking at Figure 1, SXSW Showcases by Continent, you can see that North America has dominated SXSW over the past 5 years, greater than all other continents combined. Total showcases are down 6% this year (not shown in this graph) and from the graph we can see that this is due solely to the reduction in the number of showcases from North America. All remaining continents experienced an increase in number of music showcases at SXSW 2009. Looking at some of the more underrepresented continents, while Oceania and Asia show significantly lower numbers than Europe and North America, they have had a consistent presence at SXSW from 2005-2009. Additionally, it seems that SXSW is making an effort to incorporate a broader musical cornucopia because showcases from South America have increased every year; in fact, in 2009 there are more artists from South American than Australia. Finally, while Africa has been poorly represented at SXSW over the surveyed time the number of showcases in 2009 has more than doubled from 2008 numbers.

If artist showcases are only down for the North America, next we should look at which cities have been affected. First, let’s look at the 10 most populous US cities to answer this question. Those well versed in the musical communities of the United States will immediately comment that this type of analysis excludes valuable music communities like Seattle, Portland, Omaha and Athens. I agree. This data will be published in Part 2. Chew on this for now.

Figure 2 shows the number of showcases for the 10 most populous US cities. As expected, the number of showcases decreased in 2009 save for Phoenix and San Diego. San Diego based artist showcases increased by 2 in 2009, for a total of 15. Phoenix based artist showcases increased by 1 in 2009, for a total of 4. Los Angeles based artist showcases decreased by the lowest percentage, posting a 9% reduction in showcases from 2008 numbers. Houston based artists experienced the greatest percentage decrease in number of showcases, a 66% decrease from 2008 showcases, from 64 to 22. By numbers, New York based showcases reduced by the most, dropping from 263 showcases to 186 in 2009. As further illustration that population is not related to size or strength of a music community, San Jose, the tenth most populous US City has not had a showcase appearance from 2005-2009.

The significant drop in New York numbers might indicate that the US economy has had an effect on artists submitting or deciding to attend SXSW. Or it could mean that SXSW reduced the total number of available showcases. Without application data though we can’t arrive at a complete answer but we can use the available data to draw some conclusions. Let’s look at cities close to Austin to see if there was an effect of distance on number of showcases. In Figure 3, SXSW Showcases by Texas City, we see that every Texas city experienced a reduction in the number of showcases from 2008 to 2009. Austin had the largest reduction in number of showcases, 193 showcases in 2009 as compared to 239 showcases in 2008. Still, Austin showcases are almost an order of magnitude greater than the number of any other large city’s showcases in Texas. Houston again has the largest percentage reduction, 66% less showcases than 2008. Dallas’ showcase numbers are erratic for the dates surveyed and San Antonio has always had low numbers of artist showcases.

In Figure 1 we saw that SXSW has included more showcases from previously underrepresented continents, it only makes sense that there would be a visible difference in the included genres. Over the past 5 years, SXSW Music has used 40 genre categories to classify artists. SXSW has shown consistent numbers in their standard genres of Alt Country, Avant/Experimental, Bluegrass, Blues, Country, DJ, Electronic, Hip Hop / Rap, Jazz, Latin Rock, Metal, Pop, Punk, R&B, Rock, Singer-Songwriter and World. In the past two years, additional genre categories have been added which feature non-traditional or previously underrepresented genres at SXSW. In 2008 genre categories Acoustic, Alternative, Americana, Celtic, Chantuese, Classical, Electronic/Dance, Folk, Funk, Latin, and Ska were added. In 2009 genres A Capella, Adult Contemporary, Cajun, Children’s Music, Jam Band, Soul and Tejano were added. Viewing specific genre categories explains the makeup of SXSW artists. There are greater than three times as many Rock acts as the next most popular categories of Pop, Singer/Songwriter, Hip Hop / Rap, Punk, and Avant/Experimental. The decline in popularity of certain genres at SXSW can be seen by looking at the steady decline of Alt Country and Bluegrass who have 35% and 70% less showcases, respectively, from 2005 numbers.

In Part 2, more US cities will be looked at to localize the largest decreases in showcases. For now, what are your impressions of all of this data? Are there any conclusions that should be included that were missed?

Please comment…

Methodology
Genre and Geography were surveyed for SXSW’s musical showcases from 2005-2009. This information was taken from the archived data at http://200x.sxsw.com and the current http://sxsw.com/music. Attempts were made to reduce errors due to redundant data, missing genre or geography. Missing information was ignored from geography or genre specific data but was included in total number of showcases or genres. The designation of “showcases” was used instead of “artists.” Applications to SXSW are made for one showcase but each showcase may include multiple individual artists, specifically in the Hip Hop genre. In most cases however, “showcase” is synonymous with “artist” and for simplification of data analysis, “showcase” was used instead of artist. Possible source of error: 1. Missing geographical or genre specific data. 2. SXSW may add new artists up to the point of the conference itself, this could shift percentages one way or another but unlikely that gross conclusions would be shifted as a result.