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.