SXSW RIP
jwz.orgSeems he's talking exclusively about SXSW Music, whereas most people in our community probably think of SXSW Interactive (the techie-er of the three annual SXSW events) when they hear "SXSW".
I was about to post along these lines regarding my confusion. I had no idea it was a music festival.
This comment is the essence of the problem. SXSW was first and foremost a music festival. For me, the interactive emphasis signaled the impending decline. When my tech company employer started launching major products at SXSW, I knew that the music festival was fucked.
I really don't mean to come across as some curmudgeonly asshole but I just don't understand why every great festival ends up getting ruined by people who want to make it into something else. Why can't we be happy with simple excellence? Sundance Film Festival, for example, used to be about movies. The movies are still there but the private parties and the celebrity product giveaways and Main St. celebrity interviews on the E! channel are what most tourists come to SFF these days. It's tragic.
Amen. I had to do double takes in the past few years when I read about some tech thing at SXSW. This year I thought there must have been a hash collision on SXSW and I was reading about some other convention or conference.
It's like CES suddenly becoming all about crazy Ukrainian 36-bit vinylcore bands that were barely allowed into the country because CBP was afraid they'd claim asylum.
the hell? That's what it started out as. Music is still by far the biggest draw to SXSW.
fwiw, I was thinking the same thing. I never heard of sxsw outside of tech.
A decade or two ago, if you were a band playing the bar circuit, SXSW was something you aspired to. It was a big deal for a long while.
They don't call Austin the "Live music capital of the world" for nothing.
You mean something like the Baseball's "World Series" when Baseball is practically unheard of elsewhere.
I think what they mean by the "world" is the U.S.
To add some evidence:
2013 Glastonbury: 135,000 [0]
SXSW (music): 82,119 [1]
Neither of which compare to anything on this list[2]:
10th EXIT (NOVI SAD, SERBIA): 200,000
1st DONAUINSELFEST (VIENNA, AUSTRIA): 3,200,000
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Festival [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_by_Southwest [2] http://www.mtviggy.com/lists/the-10-biggest-music-festivals-...
> http://www.mtviggy.com/lists/the-10-biggest-music-festivals-...
So even in the US SXSW is completely dwarfed by Coachella and Summerfest.
You're acting as if SXSW is(was) the only draw to Austin's music scene. ACL, Fun Fun Fest, X other festivals and the hundreds of different venues with bands playing every night all make up a a part of it.
FWIW- My thoughts are similar on SXSW interactive. I have been going for several years, always finding that there was some amount of serendipity to putting so many nerds and vc-types in a very small space (see PG's essay on SV: http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html). This year I found it too chaotic. It's a nightmare to get in anywhere or know what's going on, even if you are "VIP." I had the good fortune to be on several groupme groups which helped though - people can tell you what's hot at a given time. There aught to be an app...
This year I found less interesting people and more corporate schtick. sxsw is so mainstream that Jimmy Kimmel hosted his late night show from sxsw this year. 5 years ago startups were actually using sxsw as successful launching pads, now it's Cottonelle vs. Charmin (actually 2 products that had expensive booths at sxsw this year).
That being said, I'll probably still go next year because I love Austin and many of my friends go.
It's similar to burning man though - every year people complain that it's jumped the shark because it got too corporate, and every year more people go.
My experience this year was exactly the opposite to yours. I too have been going for several years, and after a couple of "I'm done; not coming back next year", I decided to have change my approach.
This year I established 5 basic principles:
1. Absolutely no panels. Only solo or dual sessions.
2. No marketing sessions (nor sessions by marketing folks)
3. No keynotes (except for Snowden and Assange)
4. Go beyond the headline, and analyze the speaker. At minimum the person must have an interesting personal or professional story, regardless the talk.
5. The more technical or obscure the session, the better.
In the end this strategy paid off nicely. This was one of the best years, and the first to make me want to come back next year. I watched some gems like Philip Rosedale (Second Life, now High Fidelity), Pinterest engineers talking about their dev stack in a candid and informal conversation, Carl Bass from Autodesk, Print the Legend (the movie, and then the discussion with the film directors, plus Max from FormLabs and an ex-MakerBot), NASA, DARPA, nice demos at Startup Accelerator, and a lot more.
I certainly missed a few nice keynotes (like Neil deGrasse Tyson), but hopefully some of the sessions will be posted later.
I wasn't sure if you were kidding about toilet paper manufacturers having booths at the music festival. I found this: http://sxsw.com/film-interactive/news/2014/stop-cottonelle-r...
I also wasn't sure if another poster was kidding about Ukranian 36-bit vinylcore bands. I couldn't find any references to those.
I suppose I really can't argue about how nice it would be to "get refreshed" in the middle of the day in Austin, so I can't hate on Cottonelle. However, their page says I have to engage in conversations with "talking bums" to earn refreshing services. I'm not kidding, check my link above.
I just follow along in social media, but the last couple years I've heard nothing out of SXSWi that interested me at all.
As recently as a few years back there were a few exciting things there every year.
Maybe it's me.
Having not yet had the opportunity to attend, what's the corporate schtick you're noticing?
"Like Doritos on Facebook or use hashtag #Doritos on Twitter to unlock ____."
To the person who commented "One organizational failure in a string of massive successes doesn't sound like a data point." in the original article - that is exactly what a data point is. Maybe they meant to say it was not a trend or a pattern?
I think their wit was clouded by their desire to be a twat.
Seems like SXSW has been pronounced dead every year for the past 5+ years. Somehow it keeps getting bigger. It's the old Yogi Berra quote: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
Sure, people still go, but nobody important goes there anymore.
I haven't been to SXSW in 2 years. Three years ago the technology portion of SXSW definitely felt exactly as you described this year's music. Massively unorganized. Massively chaotic. Couldn't really find anything you were looking for, even if you tried.
While speakers and talks were mostly on time, the rest of it was just pure chaos.
Exactly my experience. When SXSWi moved to spread-out venues, it was suddenly impossible to go from, say, the Convention Center to the Sheraton between sessions, and forget about the hotel south of the lake. That signaled to me that it was too big, but they kept making it bigger.
This comment caught my attention:
"I won't be coming back. I'd have had better luck by just looking at the schedule and punching names into YouTube, then waiting for those bands to come to SF."
I wonder what the odds are we'll see within 10 years Occulus like VR environments that can capture the concert experience, reducing somewhat the need to track down bands in crazy canceling venues like this if all you are interested in is the music experience (as opposed to the Social "Concert Experience")
Won't happen. No amount of VR wizardry will ever replace massive arrays of 12" woofers driven by vacuum tubes.
Agreed that the the big environment concerts will have a place for a long time to come - but many of the bands we see are in small venues, usually seating < 200 people. I'm willing to wager that those types of experiences will be given a run for their money pretty soon.
Also - think of all the concerts with crappy sound balancing, poor sight lines, and long lines for the bathroom.
Well, the vacuum tubes have already been replaced. (I do agree with you though)
Wrong again, not in the music scene. A lot of people still prefer amps made out of vacuum tubes, because they feel the sound is more human, has more texture, and is more smooth.
Whether it's correct or not is not the point, but proves the point TylerE was making: This is an emotional thing. And some will make the point of theatre and cinema, but there's still theatre and theatre has never really been as interactive as a music concert / DJ on the deck anyway.
For a PA system? I'm pretty sure all of that is using transistors now.
For a guitar amp, I hear you (though I also think the quality of things like guitar rig in the last few years have started to sound pretty believable)
I meant both. I've talked to guitarists/electronics engineers who design amps for their guitars, but they're still in use, I think. If my memory serves me well, Marshall still uses them.
Nor should they.
Don't try to abstract away the experience of going to a live concert. That's the whole point.
Not to mention, you know, actually meeting other people.
I can't read this site for more than 10 seconds before my eyes start to bleed.
Hehehe. Someone doesn't like the `Homebrew` setting on Terminal ;).
Oddly enough it didn't bother me when I was reading it, but now it's messed up my colour perception and everything looks pink.
I guess we have it easier than someone who's colorblind, I guess.
Out of curiosity, how are your terminal colors configured?
I use homebrew terminal colors and I still find it painful to read the type on Jamie's blog. Font choice is a big part of it. I also turn down the opacity to soften terminal.
Same. It really hurts my eyes.
If it's any consolation, I'd like to present you both with these trophies, and perhaps jwz could throw in a voucher for a free pizza.
Do people not know about all of the 'off-SXSW' stuff going on? These days it doesn't even take knowing somebody to find out where the action is.
Austinites figured this out 10 years ago.
Really, what is it about a "Music Festival" where a band gets 30 minutes of stage time (if they're lucky)?
It was never about a long, entertaining performance. In Ye Olden Dayes, it was about seeing as many up and coming bands as possible in a few days time. Exposing bands to audiences and audiences to bands.
I don't know if that's even needed now in the age of youtube.
If it is of any value still, it needs to be as well-curated as it was back when. It doesn't seem to be any more.
Sounds like a simple case of not enough stages. Promoters don't seem to care, either.
Plenty of stages, too many bands shooting for their 15 minutes of fame. There are bands playing in alleys.
One of the "greatest" discoveries and label signings at SXSW was Hanson. Seriously.
Imagine a week with a couple hundred bands worse than Hanson.
I thought this post had something to do with the fact that a drunk driver smashed into a crowd, killing a bunch of people and injuring dozens. Which incidentally was also the cause of many reschedulings. But there is nothing about this incident, which leads me to believe that the author was somehow unaware of this, or he wouldn't pick such an insensitive title.
All of the official shows have been crap for a long time. I have no idea why anyone would pay $800+ for one of those passes when theres better bands playing free shows usually with free food and drink over on the east side of town.
basically an old fart says "it isn't cool anymore". Well, man, if you haven't still got the message - we're just not cool anymore, as young as we feel ourselves. Signed by a fellow old fart (of Gen X like jwz).
"It isn't cool anymore" would be more like "I went and still saw the same number of bands, but I'm just not feeling it... the bands just aren't as good as they were back in the old days." This was "It was a chaotic mess, and didn't used to be a chaotic mess". That's more of an objective issue than you're getting at.
(The word "more" is not extraneous, I'm not claiming some sort of "total objectivity", but I'd say that disorganization is something that can really happen beyond the realm of mere opinion.)
As a matter of perspective, it's been fun for me to watch a star/folk hero like jwz rise out of nowhere, a young, wild, productive dude. Now it's interesting to see a generation of developers to whom he's less known and who don't quite understand why he would make his webpage look like a terminal.
Just like it was interesting to suddenly see people fetishize super mario brothers about 10 years ago, e.g. Cory Doctorow. But now it seems SMB isn't the childhood reference, it's Pokemon.
The turning of the wheel I guess.
Hipster.
Hate to go on a tangent but I can't believe jwz still hasn't updated his site to a more reader friendly color scheme.
Jamie is likely more accomplished than you, still active, and probably doesn't give a shit.
Every time there is a jwz link, this exact same comment is made.
Once upon a time green on black was all some of us had, 24/7.
Somehow we coped.
I, too, am old enough to remember monochrome terminals. I don't know if that makes me sad or proud. If you did not live through that era how would you know about that old tech? Cultural references? Responses to comments on HN? :)
I remember our upgrade to 16 colors. That was life changing.
Or amber on black, depending on what what terminals were available in the lab.
As I recall, I coped with Usenet. In some ways, the Internet used to be much better than it is now.
That's because no one cared about the Internet back then. You could read everything interesting on Usenet, refresh rn, have a few new articles, and then...nothing.
The web was the same way, except that we could kill time looking for material for our one-page sites on deformed baby skeletons.
Maybe I just have wider interests, but I never lacked for interesting reading on usenet. And the trolling was better.
I still think gopher was a better way to distribute information. Also, I miss talkd. I'll show my nostalgic self out now.
Read faster. ;>
Trolling was much, much better. There was a delicate obscenity to it that was appreciated by the smaller community.
Once upon a time dialup was all some of us had, 24/7.
Somehow we coped.
What? It's one of the best color schemes out there on the net.
You don't normally use <color> on black? Get off my damn lawn, kid.
I don't much care for the color scheme, either, but luckily it only bothers me for about 2 seconds, thanks to a handy Chrome extension "Change Colors".
On Apple devices, Safari's reader mode can fix that.
I clicked the article thinking it was about the recent deaths at SXSW.
It's someone complaining about bands. There's first world problems, and then there's "first world" first world problems. You americans are blessed with amazing conferences of all sorts especially tech, SXSW included, but god forbid the music was "not obscure enough".
Why is this even on HN?
jwz is a well known hacker and sf club owner. SXSW is about, among other things, the music, so I think the music is a worthy topic of discussion.
The fact that the US has lots of conferences is a good reason to avoid the bad ones.
At least a complaint (from an actual club owner) about bands not going onstage on-schedule has some basis.
Here's someone complaining that the Spotify house "was too corporate"
http://techrotica.tumblr.com/post/79212740983/for-the-record...
SXSW is a music festival. Music is the reason everyone is there.
It used to be. Now, the interactive part is bigger than the music part.
Likely the author is Jamie Zawinski, one of the creators of Netscape and proprietor of a SF music venue and all-around hacker legend.
That is indeed Jamie.
This is the first complaint I've seen about disorganization. Most of the complaints I've heard are that the artists are too mainstream. If they're going to put on someone like Lady Gaga, they should just rent the UT football stadium and have that part be a mega festival on it's own weekend with 70k attendees. SXSW (music) has always been about the bands that could be big in about 1-2 years. You go to listen to them so that yes, you can brag to your friends that you heard them before they became famous.
They need to dial it back some.
"They need to dial it back some."
I had the same thought about Glastonbury, when they were talking about not running it a few years back, because it had got too unwieldy and a lot of the regular goers were complaining it had sold out and become too big.
As you suggest, if you could split the festival (and the crowds) in two and have one festival cover all the larger (Lady Gaga, Oasis, Rolling Stones...) or more mainstream/hyped acts along with the people who primarily aren't interested in the more obscure bands/experiences to be had away from the main stages, that would then leave the rest of the festival to the regulars who want to wonder around the green/healing fields and see all the lesser known (but often better/more interesting) bands.
I'm not sure how the logistics (or planning) would pan out given that i suspect the majority of money the festival forks out are for the bigger acts. But if they were to run these two festivals in consecutive weeks perhaps the economies of that would make it more viable.
Fortunately Glastonbury has managed to stay resolutely non-corporate, unlike most of the larger UK music festivals (V, Reading, Leeds etc.) and still manage to host a shedload of really good bands across the fame/size spectrum.
But maybe, in a similar fasion, if SXSW were to split and leave the corporate shilling to the mainstream crowd/event, maybe the other half of the festival could return to more how it was, discovering new music with people who care about new music and not having to queue for ages for the privilege?