Hacker News Reader

Comment by nsxwolf | Hacker News Reader

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com