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Q&A: SXSW Co-Founder/Co-Director Roland Swenson

Roland Swenson has devoted 20 years of his life to a music festival You have to say, it's been a pretty good run. And there's no end in sight. Inspired by the pioneering New Music Seminar in New York, Swenson and his partners -- Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black, promoter Louis Meyers and Chronicle publisher Nick Barbaro -- considered, but soon jettisoned, the idea of persuading the music industry to come to Austin, Texas. Instead, the four put the emphasis on live music, inviting bands from nearby cities to perform showcases. At the time, Swenson, the "promotion person" at the Chronicle, expected maybe 150 to come. More than 700 registered. And the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, boasting the now-familiar acronym SXSW, became a yearly event. During the past two decades, the conference has expanded to embrace the creative worlds of film and interactive media. But the music festival remains its heart. Swenson took a break from preparing the 2006 event to discuss the festival's history and how the vision has changed now that total attendance tops 16,000.

Talk about your original vision and how that has changed as the festival has grown.

As far as our original idea, it was to create an event that the artists and the companies they work with could use to promote themselves. There're various myths about our original intent. Some people say it was only supposed to be for Austin bands. No, it was never intended to be for only Austin bands. In fact, one of the things we worked hardest on in the beginning was drawing in artists from other parts of the country. Some people say it was just supposed to be for unsigned bands. But that's not true either. At various times, I worked with bands who were signed to major labels and I knew they had needs that could be met by an event like this. This was always designed to work for those artists as well. So the same idea is there. It's just on a grander scale today.

What were the discussions you and partners had immediately after the first year like?

Well, we started with very modest goals. We were hoping we would get 150 people to come, and we had about 700 people who registered for this thing. It surpassed our expectations right away. We realized we were catching lightning in a bottle. It was now incumbent on us to not let it out and keep making this work. It was tricky. We thought we understood what we were doing, but each year taught us we had more to learn.

What was your day job prior to starting SXSW?

I was the promotion person, among other duties, at the Austin Chronicle. Prior to that, I had managed some local bands and had a little indie label. I had a working class, music business experience.

When did this become a full-time position for you?

I started working full-time [on the festival] in 1991. Louis Meyers left in 1994. Louis Black and Nick Barbaro are still my partners. It's been the three of us for the last 12 or 13 years. It meant a big drop in my income for several years, but it was getting to the point where I wasn't able to work on anything other than SXSW for a good chunk of the year. I began to see that this is a year-round proposition. After we finish in March, it takes us a good six weeks to finish all the business from the conference -- collect all the money and pay all the bills and deal with lawsuits and damages and stolen stuff. Then we spend a lot of time compiling all the feedback we get from the registrants.

Each year seems to set a new attendance record. Have you given any thought as to why SXSW is doing so well if the industry is in a perpetual slump?

We grow during tough times for the music industry. When money is tight, we become more attractive. We're a relatively inexpensive way to promote artists, rather than having a showcase where you fly in a bunch of media people and executives. You can have it here and get that audience. The acts that come here to play are being exposed to the press from around the world. We have a good representation from radio, both commercial and non-commercial. We have a good turnout from talent buyers. We have TV people. Then we have the industry itself.

Would you ever put a cap on registration?

People think we have some control over how many people come, and we don't. People say we should cut off registration, but that doesn't stop people from coming. They'll just come and not be registered. That partly has to do with the growth of the fringe events. The other side of the coin is that with more business people coming to the conference, the opportunities for the acts have also risen.

You bring up the fringe events. There's essentially a shadow SXSW now, with all the daytime parties and VIP events at night.

It's a double-edged sword for us. Undoubtedly, all the parties and events going on around us is part of what draws people to our events. The other side of that is that we find ourselves competing for an audience with all these daytime events. It's put the onus on us to come up with really strong programming in our panels and to bring traffic into our trade show. It's important, but it's ultimately the kind of thing that could hurt us. Without naming names, I think there are other events that have been swallowed up by the fringe events and may not survive much longer.

You've had your share of detractors. It seems to have died down, but almost immediately there were anti-SXSW events. How did that affect you?

You know, rebelling against authority is pretty basic in rock'n'roll. We went through a long period where we were perceived as "The Establishment," or something silly like that. Now that we've been around as long as we are, people have just kind of accepted that this is what we do. The furor has definitely died down, but that's not to say there won't be future backlashes. It seems silly to me because they wouldn't be doing their event if we weren't doing ours.

What happened when you tried to replicate the model in Portland, Ore., in the late 1990s?

That's when we learned we really weren't all that smart. We did that for seven years. It was the kind of thing that was really fun and we loved Portland, but every year was kind of like playing chicken. What happened is we were working with a weekly paper there, and it didn't turn out the way they wanted. They told us they wanted to do something themselves, and we said, "OK, then we're out." It turned out to be a good thing for us. If we had gone ahead with the event, it would have occurred Sept. 15, 2001. If we had gone ahead, it could have sunk the company.

Can the film and interactive events ever earn the stature of the music event?

We didn't want it to just be that film event that had a lot of music stuff in it. We really wanted it to be an event that could stand on its own and have its own reputation. We've succeeded on that level. Whenever writers put together a list of the top-10 film festivals in the world, we're always included in that. Every year we're seeing more world premieres and films that are in serious contention for distribution deals. The interactive media event was tied to the tech boom in that it grew really fast and then dropped off. Now it's kind of picked up steam again. It was us looking to the future trying to figure out where entertainment was going to be in the next century. It seemed obvious enough it was going to be some combination of sound and images and interactivity.

Can SXSW get too big? Any talked-about show seems to fill up quite early in the evening these days, and each year it gets harder to club-hop.

It's always been about choices. You can't see everything you might want to see. The thing is that even when we were a third the size we are now we had the same problem of people not being able to get into every show they want to get into. To a certain extent, that's the nature of the beast. If we're bringing bands people want to see and putting them in club-type settings, it's going to fill up. What we've tried to do, and it's kind of a vicious circle, but we keep expanding the number of venues we use to accommodate the attendance. But that drives attendance, so it's a balancing act. At the same time, there're kind of built-in brakes on the event in that there are so many seats on airplanes and there are only so many hotel rooms. It does get to a point where people just can't get here.