How Britain plays the SXSW game

This is a good article on how Britain uses SXSW to launch and market acts in the US and even as way to get more press coverage at home.

The line I like best is about making up a band and getting people to talk about it. In fact, I have wondered if you can go one step further and generate the buzz and not bother to attend SXSW at all -- just make people think you had performed there.

Independent Online Edition, 3/15/07 - Movers, shakers and music makers: The festival that rocks the world: "For 10 days, Austin becomes the pole of a humming magnetic field of obsessive attention. 'SXSW is valuable because if you hit your straps and the main newspapers are there and they write it up, things can happen,' says Stewart. 'US agents and radio stations all pay attention to it. I remember flying down to Austin with the critic from the Chicago Tribune. He was going to file at least two pages' worth of stories every day.'

As recently as 2001, a mere 23 artists travelled from the UK to attend South by Southwest. This year that figure has mushroomed to 123, which means the Brits account for more than half of all the overseas performers in attendance. Previously, British acts considered SXSW important because of the access it afforded to the ever-desirable US market. That remains true, but such is the international pull of the event that it can even offer a better-than-average chance of being spotted by the British press, since so many of them fly out to cover the occasion.

But any vestiges of the notion that SXSW represents independence, self-reliance and the spirit of DIY have all but vanished. It's an intense scramble for attention, and if you've managed to get selected from the heaving scrum, you'd better be ready to make the best of the opportunity.

'Lots of US marketing campaigns for UK artists are very much centred on SXSW,' points out Paul Williams, the managing editor of Music Week. 'For example, albums by James Morrison and Amy Winehouse are both being released this week in America, all because SXSW is this week. Plans are very much keyed into it, and the campaigns are angled on how best to make use of this event and the platform it offers.' ...

Every year, the UK papers run a clutch of reports from SXSW intended to celebrate the freewheeling diversity and rich cultural range of the event, but often they convey mostly chaos and incoherence, as the writers stumble around town, pinging the top off another Corona while trying to decide which harbinger of the new musical revolution to go and listen to next. With countless acts playing-off-the-cuff gigs at all times of day in venues ranging from backyards to lobbies and parking lots, myths and rumours breed like plankton. As one British visitor put it: 'You could just invent a couple of bands and tell people to go check them out, and they'd quickly become a must-see act.' ...

'I suppose an event like this can become a victim of its own success,' suggests Williams. 'The impression I get is that every year it becomes more difficult to get into the gigs you want to go to, because how do you plough through 1,500 acts in four days? Then, even when you've worked out which acts you're going to see, the acts that are in demand are so over-subscribed that you probably have to turn up hours before they play to have a chance of getting into the venue. You might say "I really want to see so-and-so", but thousands of other people want to see them as well.'"

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