heute:pop:blog.  

So, I got back this morning from my trip to Austin, caught some sleep and am working on my next heute:pop:morgen radio show which will cover the event. Well, I’m going to play tracks of the artists I saw there and basically make everyone jealous and tell them what a great time I had.

It was a hot one (30C+) and it was my birthday last Wednesday. Doesn’t happen very often that I have a margarita at 1.30pm in the sunshine on my birthday. I meant to blog from there as well but there was just no time to sit down for 30 min and do this…

One highlight for me was surly Boys Noize which was absolutely insane and they ended up throwing him in the crowd and everyone was loving it. Maybe an odd one as he was one of the very few DJs is saw at the official SXSW showcases. Amazing nevertheless.

Another band I was hugely enjoying was This Will Destroy You, a band from Texas who I had never heard before. This was one of those SXSW moment where a friend tells you that you should come and check out this band (thanks for the recommendation Anthony) and then you are totally blown away. They seem to be playing in London soon as well.

Other highlights include Sia (she is a bit middle of the road but I just always liked her), Lightspeed Champion (live much better than the album), Frightened Rabbit (the Scotts know what they are doing), Bon Iver (shame about the sound problems but I loved it), Kimya Dawson (was watching that in between tons of 15 to 17 year olds who knew all the lyrics) Emmy The Great (Cute!) and N.E.R.D. (normally not my thing but what a great show). Songs of all those will be featured on my next heute:pop:morgen show.

On the more industry side there was one thing I notice straight away: there was no complaining. When you go to conferences like Midem of Popkomm you hear a lot of companies complaining about the way their business is going but in Austin you have nothing of that. I see a few reasons for that:
1. The companies I have been meeting which are typically the bigger independent labels are actually doing quite well at the moment. From what I hear they are now getting some good income from a bunch of digital services and they can also sustain some good CD sales
2. When you go to SXSW you can see that the Music Industry has still got one very flourishing arm: the live part. There are 1800 bands playing in (often) packed venues over the course of a week, it’s difficult to then start complaining about how no one wants to spend any money on music. Admittedly many of the people at those gigs are working in the industry but when you walk down 6th Street in Austin on Friday night you only see very few badges
3. Well, it’s SXSW: fantastic music, great weather, plenty of margaritas, excellent Mexican food. Not really good moaning conditions.

I think think this is all I can squeeze out of my jetlagged brain right now, I’m sure there will be more to come about SXSW. Oh and I took a few pictures as well. Actually just a very few, didn’t want to take my camera around all day and night: www.flickr.com/photos/pete_bug/sets/72157604137769936/

I went to Midem in Cannes again this year (that was last week) and I just recovered from it now so I can write a few words about it. Feels like the first think I want to mention is the Qtrax disaster. It was all a bit of a comedy development, every time you talked to another person the story got more bizarre, the numbers of money they spent at Midem increased and less labels had actually signed a deal with them.

For everyone who is not aware what happened, Qtrax announced this p2p service which allows you to download 25m different tracks for free paid for by advertising. It then turns out that the major labels hadn’t actually signed deals with Qtrax. They spent huge amount of money at Midem to promote their service: they were one of the main sponsors, had huge billboards everywhere and sponsored parties with LL Cool J and James Blunt. Funny stuff…

Other than that the mood was fairly uplifting the number of attendees was down a little but when you went to the Carlton or Martinez late at night you would not notice that, it was rammed with people. I was thinking about that: the record industry is complaining about revenues going down every year but when you go to these hotels you see everyone drinking heavily overpriced drinks and going to the very expensive restaurants. It just shows you that there are various parts of the music industry that are doing very well (for example the publishing and live music arms of the industry).

It was no surprise but the number of people working on the digital side of the music industry seemed to have increased again which is nice to see. It is interesting how people react much more positive and open when talking to new digital businesses. Feels like in the last 12 months many people had a bit of a wake up call in regards to digital music services.

All in all I had a good time but I stayed for a bit too long (I was there for six days) so at the end I was very much worn out. Can’t really complain about being tired in the south of France having amazing food and drinking great wine.

One more thing: a bit of a highlight for me was to see Larry Lessig talking as part of MidemNet. I know his presentation was recorded but I couldn’t find it online yet. It was very similar to his presentation at the TED conference in March of last year which you can check out here, very interesting stuff:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs]