This year’s South By Southwest is only a few weeks away in lovely Austin: the “Weird City” of the Lone Star State. Split into three events, SXSW Interactive runs from March 13 through March 17; SXSW Film also starts on March 13, but ends on the March 21.
SXSW Music runs from March 17 through March 22, and showcases a mix of speakers, panels, meetups, and thousands of musical performances. In its 29th year, the SXSW Music Festival is still one of the country’s premiere music festivals, highlighting a diverse range of artists and bands from around the world.
Convergence Day takes place on March 17, which is the only day where all three events overlap. Open to all badgeholders, attendees can absorb a full day of programming intended to connect and explore the current and future universes of film, music and technology as these universes continue to merge and grow in the next decade or two.
In addition to Convergence, the Media Conference offers plenty of panels and talks during the rest of the week, including a session with economist Paul Krugman & Win Butler (Arcade Fire) on the celebrity economy in music, “brandvertising” (i.e., artist marketing), copyright issues, sampling, and data analyses and visualizations. Not the sexiest music topics, but these sessions will certainly be very informative on the state of the industry and where it is headed.
Festival organizers recently released the official Music Festival Schedule, though subject to change daily probably right up until the festival’s end even after announcing three rounds of artists invited to perform, trying to give attendees sufficient time to plan ahead (please use the official SXSW GO 2015 App for up-to-the-minute changes). A cursory look at the evening showcases (concerts really) scheduled indicates there will be an extremely healthy dose of musical entertainment crammed into several nights across dozens of venues across much the city’s downtown area.
Some notable acts to look forward to:
- A-Trak
- Alex Winston
- Best Coast
- Big Data
- Dilated Peoples
- Halsey
- Marina and the Diamonds
- MS MR
- Portugal. The Man
- Tove Lo
There are many more musical acts, both official and unofficial, that will be performing in Austin, and let the countdown to SXSW begin.
[photos via Robert Santo (top) | Diego Donamaria (bottom)]