SXSW Distribution Buzz

The SXSW Music and Media Conference has reached its 27^th year in Austin, Texas and continuously grows its large reputation as the biggest and most anticipated convergence of all things music. According to the people at SXSW, their spirit is being kept alive by their continued effort to offer compelling daytime programming and stellar nighttime showcases. As most people familiar with the SXSW team are aware that at night, SXSW showcases hundreds upon hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over one hundred stages in downtown Austin. In the day time, thousands of conference registrants network in the halls of the Austin Convention Center on their way to do business deals in the SXSW Trade Show, sit in on informative panel discussions featuring some of the industry’s key players, and gain insight from legendary keynote speakers.

Active conference participants fight to get their creative content and projects distribution deals. Throughout most of the festival artists, producers, and filmmakers flock to the halls to network and gain a distribution platform for their projects that they did not have before. But something new that has shown up on the radar for SXSW is their take on ticket distribution. The Austin music conference looks at how third party distributors are creating new channels for promoters. According to researchers, the era of exclusive ticketing contracts has not come to an end yet, many venues are actively seeking new ways to get tickets in front of fans (Venues Today, 2013). “Distribution is the biggest issue in ticketing that no one is talking about right now”, says Qcue CEO Barry Kahn. There is a new shift in sales strategies for ticketing where primary ticketers look at distribution models. Even big players in the game like Ticketmaster, who was an adversary to anything that took tickets off their own channels, now sees value in third-party distribution and have created integrations to quickly move tickets on and off the platform.

Massive Music Festival Distribution Deals

Distribution deals take many forms in today’s world of new media and diverse content. Brands are seeking out new creative content to reach their audiences in every way possible. The music festival industry specifically is taking new leaps with how they deliver their various streams of creative content. Ultra Music, the top electronic music label and Machinima, the dominant video entertainment network, have announced their new exciting partnership this year. Machinima is the number one global video entertainment network for young males ages 13-34 years old, specializing in gameplay videos, scripted animated series featuring video game characters, and official game trailers according to Billboard Biz. In this new deal, Machinima will exclusively manage ad sales for Ultra’s YouTube content and share in the ad revenue. The partnership also requires that the companies collaborate to match up Ultra artists with Machinima’s videographers, to produce original content that will be distributed within Machinima’s network of over 6,000 channel partners with over 262 million viewers a month globally.

“As YouTube is now one of the most powerful platforms being used to distribute digital media, this partnership with Machinima is a great step forward for our artists and our music,” said Patrick Moxey, President of Ultra Music. “Music today is increasingly an audio-visual experience.” Ultra now produces approximately 100 new music videos per year and numerous full-length concert experiences (Machinima, 2013). These numbers are amazing given that music festivals can capitalize on all the fans that cannot physically attend the festivals. With the wave of distribution deals hitting viral channels like it is, newer and broader audience reach can be achieved. Currently, Ultra Music is the number one viewed YouTube channel for electronic music resulting in over 1 million subscribers with over 2 billion views. Electronic music is still a fresh face amongst the other music genre veterans, to have a fan base as large as this is astronomical. Ultra Music has several projects currently in the works including over 70 videos in production and a video specific A&R representative.