on the road to SXSW

SomaFM is road tripping to South by Southwest this year. Well, at least Rusty and Merin are. Elise is going to fly in a little later. But on the way there, we're going to spread the word about SomaFM along historic Route 66 and the southern US. And tell you about it in the process.

Great panel on music licensing

I’m in the “Is Collective Licensing for P2P File Sharing a Future Source of Income for the Music Industry?” panel at SXSW. It’s a great panel - huge amounts of intelligent debate and opinions - I’m loving it. Sandy Pearlman, a professor at McGill University, is great; Jim Griffin (who runs the Pho list and is a digital media consultant to Warner and other large labels). Rick Carnes from the Songwriters Guild of America has a lot of really valid points he’s making about the rights of creators while also balancing the rights of fans and ‘consumers of music’.

There are also a lot of industry heavyweights in the audience, including John Simson from SoundExchange, Jay Rosenthal from NMPA, and Ken Freundlic, founder of Royalty Logic (a group that is trying to compete with SoundExchange), and more.

I’ll post some audio bits from it later on my Rusty on Radio blog a little later; it’s incredible educational and really drives the point down about how complex digital copyright issues are; and how many diverging issues there are.

Mar
20th

Fri

The Scene on Sixth Street. The city closes much of Sixth to traffic, as well as the adjacent blocks of some of the intersecting streets.

Tori Amos preforming Thursday night, March 19th, at the SoundExchange party at La Zona Rosa during SXSW.

Mar
19th

Thu

Ulrich Schnauss performing at Elysium

Ulrich Schnauss brought out two guitarists for his “Laptop” performance, which really added a great dimension. Since he often uses abstract guitar samples, the live guitarists blended nicely with the music.

Ulrich Schnauss performs at Elysium during SXSW 2009

Ulrich Schnauss performing at Elysium

Most of crew that put on the Bay Area Takeover even at SXSW09 at Beauty Bar in Austin, during SXSW.

Electro-rockers “The Frail” plays to a packed room at the Bay Area Takeover.

The Union Trade performs at The Bay Area Takeover during SXSW 2009, at the Beauty Bar.

“Two Sheds” perform at the Bay Area Takeover at Beauty Bar right now at SXSW.

By 1 PM, the place was packed! This is just the front area; inside was mostly full, and there was the outdoor stage in the back as well.

SomaFM Schwag. We gave away 250 buttons and about 300 stickers, and numerous flyers.

Bay area takeover just started.

It’s unbelievable how many people are ditching work to attend all the different free parties at SXSW today.

Ian McCulloch on vocals, Echo and the Bunnymen at Emo’s, SXSW 2009.

Mar
18th

Wed

Ulrich Schnauss, The Egg

Ulrich Schnauss did a great set tonight. He had a couple guitarists join him for a few of the tracks, which really added to the show.

Ulrich Schnaus

Same goes for The Egg, who came in from the UK to do a show tonight. We play a bunch of the older stuff from The Egg on Groove Salad and Space Station Soma - but they’re more funky and less spacey in their latest incarnation… so expect to hear their new material on Groove Salad and Beat Blender.

The Egg

The Egg Live

Juliette Lewis performs at Emo’s, opening for Echo and the Bunnymen. Quite the 90s night.

As Ted from Bagel Radio described it, “Juliette Lewis is channeling Stevie Nicks” with her lace gloves and leggings. It also brought back memories of the movie “Strange Days”.

Juliette Lewis by Rusty Hodge

Lots of photographers were shooting here!

Yeh, I know, not the kind of music you expect to hear on SomaFM, but we’re seeing a lot of different stuff at SXSW and want to share it all with you.